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3. Sulphur emerger, Page 2

Since John W is in this conversation I'll thank him for the recent email re tying materials, and tell him I was nearly blown off the Delaware the previous two days. By wind, not the excellent fishing. More on that later.

Spence, and John, I think you are right about most normal emergence happening in a more horizontal orientation. I only suspect, and do not have actual observation or video to back it up, that the vertical emergers actually mimic anything the trout see and know.

However, the klink style emergers have been very popular with the trout. Far be it from me to try to tell trout that they shouldn't find them appealing. And Spence, you and I tie them very much the same way (I often add a very sparse short tail of antron or zelon. I believe John W has one or two of my olives, and I remember a day on the Little Lehigh where I put him on a fish I couldn't reach from my position, said "Try my emerger," which he did and promptly caught the fish. So I hope we have another convert. JAD has one of my Iso versions, in which I used twisted marabou instead of the biot for the abdomen. Ask him about how it did last fall. I can tell you when I recently saw it in his box and reached for it he said, and I quote, "[Expletive deleted] no, you aren't gettin' that back!" So you might give that pattern a try on the Isos. I ribbed the marabou with fine wire, but mostly for durability. Try the Gamakatsu C15-BV barbless hook for this fly. It's perfect.

Louis,

I'm thinking that I'm skating on thin ice here and probably should go private with this, but...

I posted a link a while back to a vid that was done in England and it showed their large drake floating downstream and working it's way out of it's shuck. Because the fly is large it was easier to watch the process. The whole bug, shuck and all was on top of the water.

I'm just thinking that it may not be a bad idea to tie your emergers, some of them at least, on regular straight hooks as opposed to the curved ones.

I have discussed before the Brown Drakes I've watched struggling to free themselves and not being successful. They seemed to have basically run out of energy and were lying in slack water alive, but no longer able to do anything. They were what we may refer to as cripples or stillborns. It's like they only have one or two chances to get the process right and if something goes wrong they are done.

I have been interested in some of the flies tied by Shane Stalcup. On the wonderful site of Charlie Cravens he has a couple of his bugs and how to tie them...You mentioned the Iso...I have tied up some of Stalcup's "Gilled Nymph" to represent the Brown Drake and what I thought I was watching when I spotted the stillborns. If they work later this season I don't see why they wouldn't work for the Iso's as well.

If you were a big old basically lazy Brown Trout living near some of those places where there's slack water...You know those places where the water seems to turn itself upstream...Why wouldn't you just lay there and suck in those poor little critters floating by your lie and just put them out of their misery?! Who knew that Brown Trout are the Dr Kervorkian's of the stream?

The life of a mayfly is brutal!

Speaking again of Iso's...I may have posted this, but last year I was fishing and there were Iso's everywhere. I was watching a male flying up and down at my eye level and was just about to reach out and grab him when a Cedar Waxwing flew right by my head and hawked it right out of the air right in my face. I really felt for that guy...He had run all the gauntlets and made it to maybe moments of getting laid...The rasison d etat of his existence only to come up just a little short...

...I mentioned Samuel Beckett in another thread. How's that for the absurdity of existence!? Sammy was an amateur! Nature is the greatest of all existentialists!

Spence

PS This is a big aside...One of the first ever papers presented to the American Philosopical Society, I think it was called in Philly was on the mayfly. Thomas Jefferson and Benny Franklin belonged to this group...The guy wrote something about the fleeting character of the mayfly and in the hands of a poet he could carry this a bit too far...Not unlike Spence, eh!

PSS I just was interrupted here by a phone call from Tony (Gutcutter) I guess he's been up in some state park in PA hassling trout the past few days...Sounds like he did ok, but I'll leave his fishing report to him. He called to try to get me to straighten out my Wings...He's looking for a rubber match here in a few weeks between his boys (Pittsburgh) and my Wings...

if you have or have access to fauceglia's book "mayflies" you will see a sequence of photos showing the emergence of a paraleptophlebia adoptiva. the nymph floats horizontally in the surface film. i tie floating nymphs and transitional patterns on tmc101 hooks. the "ass end down" style emerger probably imitates the action of the bug trying to pop through the surface tension and into the film.check out the cutter video "bugs of the underworld" to see this event actually happen from below and above the surface.
both styles of emergers work well and i use them both.
and... as for the topic of this thread -

pick a general sulphur color and have at it.
if you really think about - the freshest duns (most recently emerged) are quite a bit brighter than the duns you see flying around

and - when color matters it matters the least.

before changing to a different color because you feel that you're being snubbed because of color
change the style of fly (not the color)
lengthen your leader
drop the diameter of your tippet
and MOST importantly - really check your drift

What he (Gut) said. Spence, I have both vertical and horizontal emergers. Lloyd has a great horizontal pattern in his book, and I use it and a modification of it as well as the vertical emerger. One thing I was thinking is if the fish don't see all that many verticals, it still may trigger the dinner bell due to its physical appearance. Fish know the general appearance of a bug stuck in the shuck and it may not matter it it's in the film, hanging below the film, or even completely submerged (i.e. best imitated by a wet fly or a sunken dun. I've had fish take sunken duns when they wouldn't touch them floating. Trout have to eat whatever looks good, wherever they find it. Some have suggested the vertical emergers work because they come into the trout's window sooner--are seen more easily from a greater distance. Perhaps this is true. I'm just liking them now. I may switch to something else next year as my go to--perhaps a comparadun, or a wet fly in the film. I tend to change my batting line up every few years, perhaps just to keep myself trying new things.