The sulphur mayflies are on now and provide outstanding fishing even if they are frustrating at times. The duns start coming off in the middle of the afternoon and many continue until dark. The spinners come back about an hour before dark and continue until dark. Often the concentration of duns and spinners on the stream at the same time provides truly outstanding dry fly fishing.
One evening my son, Jeff, and I stayed late on a small headwater stream in order to take advantage of this fishing. The last pool we had light enough to fish before hiking out had eleven trout feeding on the natural sulphurs. We had great fishing. My favorite sulphur drys are Shenk’s Sulphur size 16 and 18 and Murray’s Sulphur Fly size 16 and 18. I fish all of these on a Classic 7 1/2 ft or 9ft 6X leader.
The behavior of the sulphurs may vary from stream to stream. I took off three days to fish the sulphur hatch on Big Spring and the first two evenings the hatches were great and there were many rising trout and the fishing was outstanding. The third evening the flies were sparse. There were few feeding trout and the fishing was poor.
One of my favorite Pennsylvania streams has a good sulphur hatch but it does not come on until about one half hour before dark. I get my best action by going to the areas where I’ve previously found the best feeding stations.
I get my best sulphur dry fly fishing by using cautious approaches and using delicate slack line casts.