This month, when you're fishing a green drake hatch, take
a moment. Note the color of the abdomen and the burgundy eyes of the adult mayflies. Feel its velvety
wings and stubby tails. Smell its legs.
Why, this is no green drake at all. It's a
timpanoga
hecuba, which I believe is Blackfeet for “tiny bird of many names” (not really). Around
Yellowstone Park they call it the drake mackerel. Around Grand Teton National Park it's called the Snake Drake. Other places have the fall
drake hatch. Some
call it the large dark Hendrickson, others the timpanoga or hecuba, and others yet the red quill.
Aside from the strawberry and cream color (and without dissecting the male's
genitals- no joke - according to Rick Hafele and Dave Hughes in
Western Mayfly Hatches),
it's easy to think they are green drakes. Three short tails, slate gray wings, stocky
abdomens, about a size 12.
 |
| Green drakes. |
A thick hatch is uncommon – it can take years before an
angler encounters one. They enjoy baetis weather, so if you pack a couple rows
of blue-winged olive dries, bring a couple big Royal Wulffs.
The nymphs are brown and mottled, but since hatches are
neither common nor thick, there are likely relatively few. A thick Pheasant
Tail or buggy Hare's Ear should imitate it.
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| The nymph. |
West Yellowstone legend Craig Mathews developed a pattern
called the Drake Mackerel Emerger. Hamilton, Montana's Chuck Stranahan created
a fly called the Brindle 'Chute that imitates the
dun stage.
“(Gary LaFontaine) wrote at length about ambient light, how
orange and green ambient light are present at streamside and bounce off
everything we throw into the water,” Stranahan
wrote. “The Brindle 'Chute applies those principles with extraordinary
results.”
 |
| The Brindle 'Chute. |
Of the few I've encountered, a high percentage were
cripples. Thus the Royal Wulff Cripple is also a good bet ( basically a
standard Wulff, tied with a forward post ala the Quigley Cripple along with a
trailing shuck). Or an Adams.
According to Ernest Schwiebert's book Nymphs Volume 1,
hecubas hatch from the Pecos River and Rio Chama in New Mexico to the Conejos,
Arkansas, Roaring Fork, Fryingpan and upper Gunnison rivers in Colorado to the
Provo in Utah (particularly near the Timpanogos Cave, from where it's Latin
name derives) to the eastern Sierras to Oregon, to Idaho's Big Wood River,
Wyoming's upper Snake and Gros Ventre rivers, and the Canadian Rockies. I have
recorded them on Montana's lower Gallatin, and Yellowstone National Park's
northeast corner gets reliable hatches that see more attention than most. The
Yellowstone River from Yankee Jim Canyon to Livingston usually gets a hatch,
the Musselshell reportedly sees them, and the Bitterroot and Blackfoot rivers
of western Montana are known to have hecuba hatches. It is limited to the West.
But you won't find any anyway, unless you take a closer look
at that green drake.
