Many of my customers have asked for information on fishing dry flies for smallmouth bass. I could tell they were serious because they sought information on the insects, when they appear, and effective fly patterns.
At dusk one evening as I left the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, I noticed a thick green gelatinous mass on my waders just below the water line. My first though was that some type contamination had been dumped into the river upstream. Closer examination revealed hundreds of caddis egg coating my waders which the adult caddis had dropped into the river. I instantly waded back into the river and swished the eggs thoroughly to wash them back into the river. This partly explained the outstanding fishing I had experienced that evening.
The rivers have a broad variety of caddisflies emerging and many others returning to deposit their eggs. The smallmouth feed heavily on all of these. The Mr. Rapidan Delta Wing Caddis in size 14 in black, olive or tan works well. This is a good fly for the mountain trout streams in May as well as the smallmouth rivers.
The heaviest concentration of these caddis are found from the riffles on downstream for about two hundred feet into the pool downstream. My favorite tactic is to wade into the upper part of the riffle and cast across and downstream at a 20 degree angle. I hold the line tight in my line hand and lift the rod tip about twenty degrees above the river. I use my fly rod to impart a two-inch stripping action every five seconds. This subtle movement effectively mimics the emerging and egg-laying motion of the natural caddis. By wading slowly and using this ploy all the way through the riffles until dark, I get great fishing.