River Y and March browns?

[oonchie]

Anyone know when the March browns will start hatching in force? We're about mid-March already and so far, the March brown hatch has been anything but sporadic at best. I would have thought that they'd be going good about now...

[Adam Grace]

The march browns are already out in force. There were quite a bit mating this past Saturday evening. We were hooking fish on top with MB dries. We fished from 1-dark. It was very sunny and hot. I tried catching fish on top almost the whole time. Not until 4pm or so did the trout start rising after the MB's.

The water is a little low but it looked good. If I indo-nymphed the whole time I most likely would have caught more than two fish.

Yes, the MB's are out and about.

[oonchie]

Adam,

Saw a lot of march browns mating at night, but not much fish rising for them.. I'm used to the activity around ~11AM 2 hours of intense hatch, fish going crazy rising for them...

Also anyone know why the browns hatching look so different than the full dun mating?...

-O

[chemdoc]

My buddy and I were nymphing down from the bridge Saturday morning and saw March browns mating. Since the nymphing wasn't going well, we decided to try dries around noon. The fish didn't seem interested in the march browns, so we switched to a Cutter's EC caddis (12) and landed several fish in a fairly short time. We also had luck with a 16 parachute Adams. Boy, it sure is fun when dries are working. The fish only ranged from 8 to 14 inches, but they sure love to fight. Even the little ones come flying out of the water.

We had thought to try skwalla dries, but didn't see any this week. Is the time for them past now?

[Adam Grace]

Oonchie and others,

Here is an excerpt from a great streamside entomology book,
Hatch Guide for Western Streams...

"The nymphs typically drift long distances before reaching the surface, where they hang for a short while before their nymphal shucks split open. The duns then emerge and quickly unfold their wings. Once on the surface, the duns float downstream a fair distance before flying off to hide in streamside foliage. The duns molt into spinners about two days after emerging. Spinners return to the water and lay their eggs sporadically from midday to evening and normally do not provide a fishable spinner fall. Cool, overcast days often cause the duns to stay on the water longer and produce the best hatches."

From my streamside observations I think that the MB duns are the lighter brown color with the speckled grayish wings. The spinners are thinner and darker, almost a burgandy in color. The spinners also have clear wings compared to the duns grayish speckled.

I hope that this helps.