They are still hatching, but this time they are hatching indoors. I was tying flies the other day. (My current fly tying desk, much to the wife's dismay, is on the kitchen table.) As it happens, I am setup next to the thyme, oregano, and rosemary plants we overwinter in the house. In the hunt for some material buried under the piles of dubbing, hackles, and miscellaneous ziploc bags I saw something jump. Not just any jump, but a grasshopper-esque jump. Sure enough, there on the table was a freshly hatched hopper. I must have brought the egg in with one of the plants. I chased the little devil around with the camera and finally snapped this photo. I should have put a penny or something next to him for scale, but if you were to tie an imitation of him you would have needed a size 20 hook.
My last several outings on Rapid Creek have been experimental in nature (maybe all of my trips are that way, but these seemed especially so.) I have been working on strike indicator free European style nymphing. It has been successful. At home I have been experimenting with tying the nymphs needed for such fishing. The fly pictured above uses a tungsten teardrop to achieve the weight needed for Czech style nymphing (I demonstrated using these at Saturday's tying demo). The fish pictured at the bottom was caught using a polish style woven grub (I demonstrated those a couple Saturday's back). This coming Saturday I plan to give a brief seminar on how to rig and fish these style nymphs. This is a style of fishing worth trying if you tire of fishing with cumbersome indicator and split shot rigs. See you this coming Saturday!
