Yesterday when I was trout fishing my Shenk’s Cricket got caught on a tree limb on my back cast. As I unhooked it the largest beetle I’ve ever seen fell out of the tree onto my arm. It was almost an inch long and the color of a Japanese Beetle. This could account for my good fishing earlier with my Murray’s Flying Beetle. This brings up an important point when selecting a fly with which to fish when the hatches are sparce.
For example, an entomologist told me that there are over 300 beetle-type insects along our streams. This explains the great success we have with the Flying Beetle which we tie from as large as a size 14 down to a size 18. I find these especially effective when finished downstream of shrubs and where there are trees over the stream.
Recently I was fishing the Murray’s Inchworm long after the naturals were over and the many trout I caught on it chewed it up pretty badly which actually seemed to make it more effective. Finally a long cast stuck my fly is a rotting log along the edge of the stream. As I retrieved my fly part of the log bark fell of exposing dozens of oakworms. These looked much like my chewed up Inchworms which helped explain my success.
I honestly believe this quality of looking like many natural trout foods accounts for the great success of Shenk’s Cricket in so many streams.
By analyzing our success when trout fishing we can establish a strong foundations for future success.
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