i Campaign should focus on hatches
Morning Sentinel
Campaign should focus on hatches
KEN ALLEN Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 03/14/2009

Like most Maine anglers, fishing occupies my mind now because the open-water season lies just around the corner -- 18 days away, to be exact.

Lately, friends interested in promoting Maine's fishing tourism have bounced around an intriguing idea. They think that this state should attract traveling anglers to hit our major hatches -- say red quills, blue-winged olives (BWOs), Hexes, zebra caddis and light Cahills. As the reasoning goes, tourists interested in fishing hatches spend big bucks.

I used colloquial names for these insects for good reason. For example, each spring, my Maine red-quill (also called Hendrickson) experiences include four species. Maine also has six or eight common BWO species in three genera that hatch from May through November.

As this tourism strategy evolves, it might start including specific species, but in the beginning, we might do well with simple vernacular as long as the colloquial designation doesn't confuse the target audience.

It's a common strategy in other trout states to draw anglers during hatches. In average years, certain species emerge at quite specific dates and may vary by only a week or two, if that, particularly in streams and small to medium-sized rivers.

For example, during most years on my home river, a tiny water, red quills (Ephemerella subvaria) start hatching in early afternoon around May 7 and kick off the spring's first consistent dry-fly fishing. It has always astounded me how predictable this hatch can be on this water.

The emergence begins when water reaches about 53 degrees Fahrenheit and red trilliums bloom on drab banks before the greening starts.

This small river offers consistency with the red-quill (E. subvaria) hatch -- in my humble opinion -- because of two reasons.

1. Leaves haven't unfurled yet, so the sun -- high in the sky then -- pounds the river in late April and into May, warming the small river quickly to a temperature conducive to mayfly hatches, usually at the end of the first week of May or beginning of the second one.

(Later, foliage completely shades the river and keeps temperatures cool all summer. In fact, I've seen the water temperature drop later in May when unseasonably cold rains and dense canopy conspire to cool the water).

2. To a certain extent, the limited flow in the small river insures a somewhat predictable water temperature before foliage unfurls because in an average year in central Maine, the amount of sunlight varies little. We get nine to 11 days of rain year after year in the fourth month.

Of course, extreme weather variables do change hatch dates, but that's fishing.

Larger rivers, ponds and lakes can fluctuate considerably because they warm more slowly.

Take the Kennebec River at Shawmut:

When this river was producing big time a decade ago, fishing in the last 20 days of May could be superb, or high, cold water could wreck it that month. When that river stretch did flop in May, June proved exceptional.

Not to belabor the point about predictable hatches, but my home river has another dependable insect species. Each morning from late July until well into September, a BWO emerges at 10 a.m., bringing up a digression.

Seven years ago, my intrepid companion, Jolie, and I stopped at Nelson's Restaurant in Windsor for a late breakfast, where I casually mentioned to some old acquaintances there that we were in a hurry to catch a hatch. Timing my fishing to an insect's schedule is business as usual for me, but the strategy wowed these fellows big time.

It shouldn't have impressed them, though. I've fished that hatch on this river for 35 years, and it has always begun at 10 a.m. and ended shortly after high noon. If I hadn't noticed the time frame after three-and-a-half decades, it would make me a first-rate imbecile.

Maine could be an excellent state for this tourism angle, too. We have 162 (and counting) mayfly species, more than any other state in the country, so we're fabulously wealthy in this resource.

One wrench in the works needs special mention:

In Tom Ames "Hatch Guide for New England Streams," he wrote about New England hatches and said, "Only occasionally do these species emerge in sufficient densities to bring large numbers of fish to the surface."

I respectfully disagree. That may be true in southern New England, where the more southern latitude translates into warmer waters with marginal habitat for cold-water insects, but in Maine, I cannot emphasize enough how consistently hatches have been for me in the last 50-plus years.

In fact, my two daughters, now 20 and 22 years old, have seldom fished in central Maine when a hatch wasn't bringing trout to the surface. I timed our trips to coincide with emergences, so they seldom missed seeing trout or salmon dimpling the meniscus, which kept them wildly interested.

That was my plan, too. In fact, I've often laughed to myself that if my daughters have boyfriends who take them fly fishing, the guys darn well better show them hatches on every trip or trouble will be brewing.

Here's one little tip, too, about hitting hatches. Fly rodders should concentrate on rivers and streams below impoundments because as a general rule, the water is more nutrient rich -- conducive to insect life.

For example, Tom Seymour and I fish a marginal stream below a lake that has a weird species of red quill that comes off like a blizzard in mid-May. Brown trout rise with reckless abandon. A month later, there is not a trout in the stream.

Many fly-fishing guides use the hatch angle because it works to attract customers. This state should have an advertising campaign to key on these times, which brings up one last point.

Not long ago, an acquaintance made a crack to me about writing a red-quill article every spring in early May. In truth, I don't write about red quills every year in this column, which makes me derelict in my duty.

The opening week of the red-quill hatch in central Maine deserves the same attention as the opening day of deer season, duck opener and upland-bird kickoff. In short, this one insect hatch proves a big deal. Many Maine fly fishers live for it, including me, so this annual event deserves a mention each May.

 

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer.

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