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by Curt Kuester
Except for weather, we'd have had us some caddis
Just when you thought it was safe to pack away the long johns for the year, and start swabbing on sunscreen, Mother Nature rears her sadistic head.
With the onset of last week's weather, it had a lot of us wondering if we would have been better off chasing ducks, rather than wandering up and down the rivers looking for the elusive hatches.
In the long run, Mother Nature evens everything out. Just ask all of the out-of-town fishermen who converged on Salida this weekend for the annual Caddis Festival. They were expecting, at the least, a hint of the hatch. What they found was a couple of rainy, snowy and cold days.
I know how it goes. I, too, was duped by the mild winter. When the caddis started to hatch on the lower sections of the Arkansas on April 12, I got as excited as anybody about the prospects of a long caddis hatch. Couple that with the fact that we had very little snowpack, it looked like this could be a long and productive spring.
Now, some nine days after the first storms started to work across our area, the high peaks are engulfed in a blanket of heavy, wet snow.
It now looks like we will have an average year for both the water and the caddis.
As a sportsman and a farmer, I keep a never-ending eye on the weather, spending hours trying to figure out just what will happen next. Rarely am I even remotely close to being in the neighborhood, but being out of step has never stopped me before. I am as likely to be fishing in a blizzard as I am to be duck hunting in the warmest of bluebird weather.
Everybody who hunts and fishes knows that our pursuits, and their successes are determined by the weather.
This time of the year, when the various mayflies, caddis, and stoneflies start their transformation from the nymph stage to the adult stage, is also the time of the year that the trout start to feed heavily. The trout key in on the particular stage in the process that the bugs are in. The stage when the bugs start to hatch out is determined by the water temperature, not by a calendar.
We all know the water temperature is directly tied to the air temperature, and the temperature of the surrounding area. Large rock formations, shade or lack of it, and the wind all play parts in the water warming up.
The wonderful thing about the bugs that the trout feed on is they all have different water temperatures at which they hatch out.
Even though it is an inexact science, forecasting the water temperature and the stages of a hatch is the one aspect of the fisherman's life that is agonized over.
On a daily basis, we watch the various weather channels and check the streams. When all of the pieces are in place, we then make our best guess and start fishing.
The caddis will start to hatch when the water temperatures start getting into the 50s. Blue-winged olives, which is the major hatch on the water now, start to show up when the water hits the low 40s.
Later, when the water is even warmer, stoneflies, pale morning duns and an assortment of other mayflies will start to show up. During the spring, it is the blue-winged olives and caddis that cause the most excitement.
For now, it is a waiting game, fishing the days when the warmer weather prevails. Keep an eye on the river, but remember Mother Nature is in charge.
