Fly Fishing Report for Trout and Smallmouth Bass
Trout Fishing
Fly fishing in May can be wonderful because we have many hatches occurring this month on the trout streams. For more information you can see my books Trout Fishing in the Shenandoah National Park and Virginia Blue Ribbon Streams.
During the first half of May many headwater streams have very heavy hatches of Olive Caddisflies. I catch many trout by matching this hatch with a Mr. Rapidan Olive Delta Wing Caddis.
The Gray Fox Mayflies hatch all of May and I have great success using a Spirit of Pittsford Mill size 14. Watch for trout feeding on mayflies on the lip of each pool and go one-on-one with them.
The Light Cahill Mayflies hatch the first 3 weeks of May and I use a Murray’s Professor Dry in a size 16 to catch many trout.
Keep an eye out for the trout feeding on natural inchworms. These are often splashy rises and a good technique is to present the Murray’s Inchworm with a sharp roll cast.
The little yellow stoneflies hatch during the whole month of May. Many of these emerge from the leaf jams in the back eddies. By drifting a Murray’s Little Yellow Stoneflies size 16 along the leaf jams, you will catch many trout.
The last half of May the Sulphur mayflies hatch and their density gets heavier toward the end of the month. The duns start emerging at mid day and continue until dark. The spinners return to the stream at dusk and continue to drop their eggs until dark. With this concentration of duns and spinners on the stream the last two hours of the day each pool will have many trout feeding on the surface. A Murray’s Sulphur Dry or Shenk’s Sulphur are both very effective when fishing one on one with rising trout as well as just cover the water.
I strongly encourage you to get out and take advantage of this outstanding trout fishing in May. The stream levels, water temperatures, and aquatic insect hatches are excellent.
Smallmouth Bass
The three year old Hellgrammites are reaching their full size which is over 3 inches long. They are actively moving along the stream bottom as they prepare to hatch into the adult dobsonflies. I suspect there are more hellgrammites in our smallmouth rivers than all other nymphs and larva combined. The Murray’s Heavy Black Hellgrammite size 6 is an excellent fly to use with two entirely different methods.
The easiest tactic is to wade into the edge of the river right below the riffles and cast across stream. After the hellgrammite sinks deeply, swim it back across the stream bottom by stripping it 6 inches every 10 seconds.
A second technique which I call Swing Nymphing will enable you to get your hellgrammite close to the stream bottom in the deep runs. Listen to my podcast for more on this technique.
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