In terms of flies:
I've also had some success catching little smolts by swinging tiny pheasant tails in the mornings when there's some surface activity. I often see hatches of micromayflies and occasionally tricos in the mornings. And it's not always the micro-fish eating them -- I've caught some over 15" this way. This last weekend there were quite a few tiny black & white mayflies until around 9am, along with some small tan caddis, and several black/green ones. I looked under the rocks and the most small tan caddis are in their pupal form but not yet chewing their way out of their cases. It's possible the tan adults were from a previous day and are evening hatchers like the vast majority of caddis I've seen on the AR.
When the caddis are hatching in the evenings I've had more luck swinging a pupa than with a dry (unless I'm swinging it in the film).
I don't know why, but I've never had much luck with a caddis larva, only a pupa. Trying to tie something that would work -- probably a vain and futile effort.
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