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Emergers in the surface film
by Tony Orman We were on a Marlborough backcountry river. It was one of those perfect summer mornings in the high-country. The merest of breezes up-river made the conditions ideal for upstream fishing and the river ran crystal clear. Dick and I found a fish feeding in against a bank. It was a two to three kilogram fish, feeding in the surface film by slurping in leisurely fashion. A Royal Wulff dry fly failed to get a response – as did an Adams. The trout was actually working its way up the edge, slurping this way and that, and at times only it's back showed as it fed just under the surface. 'Emergers, I bet,' I whispered to Dick. (I need not have whispered as trout do not hear human voices, but the urgency and excitement makes you whisper.) I tied on a size 16 Goddard's Super Grizzly Emerger. 'Try that Dick,' I said. The first cast was short. Dick lengthened and the tiny emerger flicked in just above the fish. The trout just casually rolled over and slurped in the fly. Ten minutes later Dick held the fish and gently released it. 'Boy! That emerger made a difference,' he said with a smile, 'Let's have a closer look at it…' In fact, there's nothing much to an emerger pattern because there does not have to be, and they have been around for more years than most anglers realise. Two American writers had used a curious phrase 'the flymph' to describe the mid-way phase between a nymph and the adult fly as far back as the 1950s. They were Vernon S ‘Pete’ Hidy and James Leisenring. In their book ‘The Art of Tying the Wet Fly and Fishing the Flymph’, Pete Hidy said he used the phrase ‘flymph’ to 'accurately identify that dramatic and little understood interval of an aquatic insect's life: the struggle up to the surface, as well as the drift (of some insects) in, or just below, the surface film.' Therefore the emerger concept is really nothing new going back to Leisenring and Hidy writing of flymphs in the 1950s. Well before that, the soft-hackled spider wet fly patterns (which go back to the 19th century) were probably imitating flymphs too. After all, Captain Hamilton, a New Zealand trout angler around the beginning of the 20th century, was using spider patterns on Manawatu brown trout. Trout may rank low in intelligence but wild creatures have an instinct for knowing when its prey is particularly vulnerable. The clue that those fish are targeting the nymphs in the surface film is in the tiny rises. Small mayfly spinners for example, caught in the surface film and with no chance of immediately breaking through, can be taken by trout at their leisure. The trout do not need to rush but feed quietly and gently, with just the merest dimple resulting – and sometimes they may not even show at all. On the Tukituki River in Hawkes Bay, a friend and I put the flymph concept into practice. On one pool in the lower Tukituki, the river ran along a papa bank at the foot of a hillside. As it became dark, the trout began to rise in the foam along the current line. We managed to fluke a couple, and later that night I examined the gullet of the fish at home. They had been taking emerging flies – in effect, caddis flymphs. It was Rod who sat down and devised a pattern tied on a size 12 or 14 hook, with a peacock herl body, a wing case, peacock herl thorax and brief hackle. We thought it might prove effective when fished on a gently swinging line, which would give movement to the nymph and hopefully suggest the upward movement of the ascending flymph. We got a chance to test the theory shortly after, positioning ourselves slightly upstream of the fish and casting so that the fly landed about a metre and a half above the dimple. A gentle tug on the floating line with the left hand would straighten the line to give direct contact with the fly. Then, as the nymph drifted into the fish's position, a slight lift of the rod or the merest increase of touch on the line with the left hand, seemed to make the nymph dart and was probably accompanied by an upward rise. That little movement certainly seemed to trigger a response with these rainbows. Significantly, the little pattern Rod devised was not unlike the brown hackle flymph which Pete Hidy and James Leisenring detailed in their book. Their pattern was as follows: Hook size: 12 or 14 Silk: crimson or claret Hackle: red furnace Body: bronze peacock herl Ribbing: narrow gold tinsel Of course, in New Zealand – well before Hidy and Leisenring – the legendary Alan Pye on the Waikato River below Lake Taupo was in effect fishing the flymph. The pattern Pye's Sedge from Keith Draper's ‘Trout Flies of New Zealand’ was: Hook: 10 or 12 Body: ginger coloured wool, tied plumpish. Hackle: bright ginger, tied sparsely and sloping back Keith Draper wrote: 'it was designed to emulate the rising pupa of one of the larger sedges (Hydropscyche Sp.) found on the Waikato River'. Whether it is during the dusk and after dark on hatching caddis, or during the day on hatching mayfly, trout like to focus on that emerging phase of the hatch. Rises will likely take the form of tiny dimples as the fish concentrate on the slowly rising nymphs that are drifting just beneath the surface, or when the insects are briefly trapped in the surface film. In all the talk of ‘matching the hatch’, books tend to concentrate on the fly itself rather than the phase of the hatch. It is important to realise that the hatch happens in phases, with that really vulnerable stage for the insect being in, or about, the surface. I suspect that this has been due to a lack of knowledge about it in the past, which has meant frustrating evenings, nights and days, when trout have continued to rise and ignored all the dry flies and nymphs tossed to them by anglers. It is conceivable that the pattern of fly is not so important as the size and shape and the level it is fished. Indeed, emergers are an approximate suggestive pattern rather than a direct imitation. John Goddard, noted guru of UK trout fishing, is no stranger to New Zealand. He is a regular visitor to these shores, and in the company of New Zealand’s own gurus, such as John Morton and Alan Simmons, fishes both the North and South Islands. John Goddard's Super Grizzly Emerger is as follows: Hook: size 14,16 or 18 (John Goddard prefers 18s) Thread: black or grey Tail: a single strand of yellow Lure-flash or two strands of yellow Krystalflash Body: grey condor herl, or a substitute such as grey goose Hackle: mixed brown and grizzle The pattern is basic, certainly not complicated. The trick to tying on small hooks is to use a minimum number of thread turns. You can devise your own emergers based on that. Try substituting the hackle with some deer hair tips that slope forward. As it’s hollow, deer hair naturally floats on the surface, which is an advantage in this situation. Polypropylene materials are an advantage, too. The Krystalflash adds sparkle, although it's also said to imitate the nymphal shuck.
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