The water levels and hatches are ideal in May providing some excellent fly fishing on the native brook trout streams. There are good hatches of Light Cahill Mayflies. I use a Murray’s Yellow Drake or Light Cahill Dry size 16 to match this hatch. There are many Little Yellow Stoneflies and Sulphur Mayfly hatches occurring this month. I match these with our Murray’s Stonefly and Murray’s Sulphur patterns.
Last year we had a heavy Little Yellow Stonefly hatch. This is a very fragile nymph but since we have not had any rolling high water I predict they will be heavy this year too. The Sulphur Duns start coming off at noon and get heavier right up until dark. The sulphur spinners start returning about 2 hours before dark and continue until dark. So the last two hours before dark you have both the duns and spinners on the water.
For more information on the streams in the Shenandoah National Park and on the hatches, see my book Trout Fishing in the Shenandoah National Park.
Fly Fishing for Bass
The sculpin minnows are becoming very active in and below the riffles as the water temperature warms. The bass will feed heavily on these natural sculpins. I match these with Murray’s Madtom Sculpins, Spuddlers, and Shenk’s Sculpins. My favorite way to fish these is to wade in right below where the riffle dumps into the pool below it. Cast across stream and after the fly sinks, swim it across the stream bottom stripping it 6 inches every 5 seconds. Listen to the rest of my podcast for more tips.
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