Some Green Drake Variations

Green Drake Emerger/Cripple
Hook: #10 TMC 200R
Thread: yellow Pearsall's
Hackle: olive grizzly
Tail: barred waterfowl flank dyed with yellow highlighter pen
Body: olive hare's mask dubbed on a loop of the tying silk
Half-wing: barred waterfowl flank dyed with yellow highlighter

     Green Drake is the first big mayfly of the year to show. They are sporadic, initially. Maybe we’ll spot one drifting like a battle cruiser among the bum-boats of small Grannom riding the flow. Or perhaps we catch sight of one paddling through the air like a B-52 among the kamikaze sedges.

The first Green Drake of the season we see is always an exciting event because we know when there’s one, there’s more to follow. Once the tap is open, trout know it. The fish were probably onto them even before we saw that one.  We think: Oh Boy. It’s on!

Rene Harrop's Drake
Hook: #10 TMC 200R
Thread: black
Hackle: olive grizzly hen fronted with black hen
Tail: barred lemon wood duck
Body: olive turkey biot & olive dubbed thorax touched with gray rabbit 

The scene might play out on any of the rivers & streams of the West Slope where the line-up of Drake species occur in their respective hatch seasons, late spring through summer.  And for swingers of flies this is fortunate, as trout enjoy & appreciate soft-hackled imitations of the big mayflies, drifted & swung – a fact observed by Rene Harrop, whose killing Green Drake pattern has become a standard for meeting the famed Henry’s Fork hatch.   

Hare's Lug & Plover Drake
Hook: #10 TMC 200R
Thread: yellow Pearsalls or UNI 8/0
Hackle: golden plover (or olive grizzly)
Tail: bronze waterfowl flank
Body: olive hare's mask dubbed on a loop of the tying silk, gray rabbit
touched over the thorax

On another fork of the Columbia Drainage, several hundred miles from the Henry’s Fork, before I’d heard of Harrop’s Drake, I was mining a similar vein, & I smiled when I first saw the patt, because I recognized Harrop’s dressing was not dictated by fancy, but straight from the authentic mojo of experience & close observation. It is built on an ancient frame, tested & true, incorporating the sound principles & elements of the soft-hackle tradition. It is a workhorse bait.

These designs hunt the top of the water column, where they may be taken as a pre-emerger, cripple, or drowned adult. Without a lot of bulk to buoy & sail the fly, they bust the surface tension immediately, then hover & track well; the flowing soft hackle coalescing the illusion of (moving) body mass & nuance of coloration.        

Busting the Surface Film

Rene Harrop's Green Drake ~ tied by Steven Bird

     There is no rig simpler & more satisfying to fish than a floating line, leader, & a single fly. One might say deceptively simple, as it requires some skill to bring out the rig’s great versatility to best advantage. Skill only comes with practice, time on the water & observation. But there are some practical tricks of preparation that don’t take much skill or practice & yield immediate benefits.            

During pre-hatches, hatches, spinner falls, & whenever I can get away with it, I prefer to drift & swing wetflies with a floating line, sans lead on the leader or bead/jighead on the fly. Fishing water three feet deep & less, the depth most of us fish most of the time on medium & small streams, or on those occasions I want to fish the top three feet of the water column, here’s a few things I do to get the fly down without resorting to jigging. And nothing against jigging, but in the season of wee flies I prefer my fly to present in a more ephemeral manner than dangling bead-headed under a bobber or hippity-hopping along the bottom. Trout want the fly behaving like an emerging nymph or a spent adult adrift in the flow, & that makes for fine sport, indulging the angler’s senses on multi-levels. The bobber & jig, though having its place, tends to usurp the eye & shut out both the finer senses & the broader view.

I want the leader & fly to penetrate the surface tension immediately. Ideally, the fly should hover on the horizontal while it descends. Whatever your opinion of fluorocarbon leaders, they are an indispensable aid in accomplishing quick surface penetration. For leaders to 9’, I use a 6’ tapered fluorocarbon leader butt tipped with a #2 metal rigging ring. For leaders over 9’ I go to a 7’ butt. The ring creates a semi-permanent leader, without the need to cut it back each time a new tippet is spliced on. Simply tie fresh tippet to the ring. (The knot tag can be left long to add a dropper, or a separate dropper can be tied to the ring to create a clean, two-fly cast). UC guide CJ Emerson introduced me to Seaguar Red Label fluoro, & I like it a lot – the best I’ve tried.

Here’s an essential step: Before I fish I take a moment to straighten my leader by pulling & stretching along its length. A couple passes down & it should hang straight & limp – if it doesn’t, switch brands. After straightening the leader I apply a sinking agent like Gerke’s Xink (& reapply about once an hour while fishing). Straightening the leader is a simple ritual that gives a definite edge – it will present, sink, & fish better.

There’s a lot to be learned from the older wetfly designs. In the Clyde & Tummel style flies of Scotland we see how the hook itself serves both as a keel to keep the fly hovering & tracking right, & a weight to get the fly subsurface quickly. These are tied both winged & wingless, but their defining characteristic is the sparse bodies, often only silk thread, & only covering the front half of the hook shank – in the Tummel style, only the front one-third of the hook. Though not as radical, we see sparse bodies on the English North country flies as well, the bodies generally ending at the hook point. Proponents of all three styles prescribe only a single turn of hackle. Bulk of materials on the hook serves to buoy & sail the fly. The more bulk: the more keel required to stabilize the fly & keep it tracking upright (particularly winged designs), & the more iron required to overcome the material’s neutral buoyancy & sink it. Generally, there is nothing to gain in tying down onto the hook bend thinking the hook needs to be disguised as much as possible in order to fool a fish. Fish don’t think of or see hooks the same way we do. Fond of the saying regarding hooks, Yorkshiremen will tell you: “The trout sees what it wants to see.”             

       

Many Yorkshire & Scottish purists refrain from tying on hooks smaller than #15. If the insect they seek to imitate is smaller than that, the smaller size is tied on a #15 hook. This leaves plenty of iron to sink the fly, & hold larger fish if need be. I’ve found this to be a very useful concept, particularly where large trout are encountered feeding on tiny insects. 

  

Think of your hook as a sinker. And of course the hook may be weighted to sink, & that is a very good option if you need to get down deeper than 3’.  But for fishing from the surface, down to 3’, I’ve found it best to apply lead conservatively – a straight piece the length of the fly’s thorax, bound beneath the hook shank rather than wound, will give surface penetration without sinking the fly unnaturally quick.

In the season of wee flies trout are usually looking up. There’s always something hatching & something dying, & a lot of bugs accumulated in the wash & on the slicks. At such times there’s a lot going on at the top of the water column, or maybe right on the surface. If that’s the case, I’ll forego dressing the leader with sink compound, the fluoro leader alone will crack through the surface tension.

Design, construction, & hook choice will determine how fast the fly sinks. I generally tie nymphs & emergers on one size larger hook than the natural requires, thus weighting the fly. If I mean the fly to fish as a spent or drowned adult I want it to fish closer to the surface, so tie on a light dryfly hook of appropriate size for the natural, & fill the hook to mid-point of the barb, in the standard fashion.

Again, bulk & excess hackle will buoy the fly. Keep hackle to no more than two turns, & bodies sparse. If you are tying soft-hackle flies, remember, the hackle flowing back over the body contributes to create the illusion of mass. If you are certain the body really does need more mass, dub spare & loose in a dubbing loop & pick out the dubbing to create a fat body without a lot of bulk – or consider a herl body, which will also give the illusion of mass, without real bulk.            

The Red Truck 5110-4 ‘Trout’ Switch Rod

Red Truck 5110-4 'Trout Switch'.

     My home water, the upper Columbia River, is big water holding large trout, which makes it the ideal set-up for a two-handed trout rod. If there be a ‘Mecca’ of two-handed trouting in the lower 48, the UC is it. 

Living & guiding here I have the opportunity to try out quite a few of the micro-spey rods available designed for trout fishing, & am lately impressed with the Red Truck, 11’, 5110-4 5-weight ‘Trout Switch’. Of the two-handed rods I’ve casted in this class, I’d have to give Red Truck the nod for being the most trouty, as well as the most versatile – so deserving a short review. I know most SHJ readers love to swing wetflies & streamers, & some might be considering a two-hander for that purpose. This is a good one, at a good price. 

Red Truck 5110-4 ~ single-hand mode.

    For its class, the Red Truck 5110-4 possesses a fairly wide usable grain window due to its 11’ length, coupled with a semi-parabolic, progressive action. I would call this rod a medium-fast action, though it holds a load well, which makes it forgiving and friendly to those with a slower casting style. It has a light, delicate ‘feel’ suitable to a trout rod. I think the action would satisfy most neoclassicists. Generally, switch rods longer than 10’ tend to be tiresome fished as single-handers, but I found that not to be so with the Red Truck. The rod’s light weight combined with a conventional, full-wells foregrip & the ability to remove the spey rear grip, makes this rod able to convert to a pleasing single-hand mode – good for fishing big dryflies (mice, drakes, stoneflies, October caddis) on big western rivers. Though it functions supremely well as a two-hander, it converts to a fine single-hander, not a cumbersome compromise.    

I am impressed with the rod’s build & performance, but I have one nitpick: the ambiguous 5-weight designation is confusing, as the rod is neither an AFTMA 5wt or a #5 Spey. (I wish rod manufacturers would make it easier on potential customers and themselves and simply print the rod’s grain window on the rod).

After casting the Red Truck with a number of lines, I determined its usable grain window to be 150-280 grains (I emailed the Red Truck rep and he confirmed this). In single-hand mode it will throw an AFTMA 5wt line okay, & could function as a far-&-fine outfit in some situations, yet with that light of a line one gets the feeling there’s a lot of ass in reserve, & there is. Loaded with an AFTMA 6wt line the Red Truck begins to come into its own – useful for fishing big dries, nymphs and bobber set-ups on big water. For me, casting single-handed, the Red Truck performs best loaded with a 7wt or 7-1/2wt line – good for swinging streamers on big water. In Spey mode, I found the Red Truck switch performs like a rocket launcher lined with a 23’ short-head weighing 260 grains – that’s roughly the equivalent of a 9wt AFTMA rated line. As a compromise, the rod performs competently in both single-hand and double-hand modes loaded with an AFTMA 8wt DT line. Narrowed to ideal, I’d put the grain window at 160-260 grains – the equivalent to a #3 spey rating – in my own experience, the best all-around for trout.  

Red Truck aluminum rod tube & opener cap.

The Red Truck switch is elegant, well-appointed with top quality guides and components. The blank is an understated, translucent gray. Guide wraps are claret with blue-ish silver tips to match the gunmetal blue reel seat. The interchangeable rear grips are built on light, aircraft-grade aluminum thread stock, & mount neatly & securely, threaded into the reel seat barrel.

Red Truck is thoughtful as well as utilitarian – the 4-piece rod comes in a heavy cloth bag with pockets for storing the two rear grips & an aluminum storage tube with a bottle opener built into the underside of the cap. Could be handy.      

Frankly, you can spend a lot more money on a light switch rod, but I would rate the 5110-4 among the best I’ve fished, in any price range. And check out the Red Truck Diesel reels. Classic, utilitarian goodness. The 7/8 Diesel reel perfectly matches and balances the 5110-4 switch. 

The Red Truck Fly Fishing Company offers a refreshing perspective. If you like quality gear that doesn't look like spaceman stuff, at a reasonable price, learn more about Red Truck rods and reels here: http://redtruckflyfishing.com/