Casey, where the devil are you? You're supposed to be letting me know how the VA baetis are coming along. :) This'll probably be my last baetis report unless something really unusual happens in coming weeks. I am looking forward to fishing this hatch on Southern and Central PA spring creeks in the area for at least two or three more weeks, whenever time affords a trip. I have one more creek to explore to see if it holds a fishable hatch, and an old favorite I haven't made it to yet, then I'll stay with known streams, trying to find new sections to fish. On Saturday I returned to the stream mentioned in the Mutillidae thread and finally found a spot to fish (everyone else in the state was there too). Fish in this stream, in the run I fished, at this time of day, under these weather conditions (cloudy) seemed to prefer my CDC USD cripple over Gonzo's USD Zelon mayfly pattern, much to my surprise. I caught one fish on the Zelon winged fly then fished and fished it over sporadically rising fish to no avail. Not knowing what to do for sure, but experiencing a lot of glare, I reverted to my old very visible standby just to see what would happen. The result was five more fish, including the biggest so far this year (not huge by any means--I'll leave it to your imagination since I don't often measure and am inclined to lie). The last four were from an eddy that I hadn't tried previously, so Gonzo's fly might have worked just fine there, but I've had fish refuse my CDC fly so disdainfully at times that I'd lost some confidence in it and was pleasantly surprised to find it working over these very pressured fish. It appears either to work well or not at all in this stream. Last year, a bit later in the season, fish in a more heavily fished area downstream actually laughed at the fly. What I'm trying to suggest is, carry several patterns for baetis. It seems that under different conditions one fly may produce better than another, and don't believe that you've ever found the magic bullet. At least for me such doesn't exist. Now I haven't tied and tried Gonzo's burned polywing dun, but will soon. If someone will break up this monologue with their baetis report, I might try to give a report on my experiences with the polywing later.
"He spread them a yard and a half. 'And every one that got away is this big.'"
--Fred Chappell