Green River below Flaming Gorge · fly box
A big, cold tailwater that grows enormous rainbows and hosts a genuine cicada hatch.
| Pattern | Imitates | Size | Technique |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cicada, foam-bodied | Adult cicada | #6-8 | Cast tight to the cliff-side willows and let it sit; the take is a full boil. |
| Zebra Midge, red | Chironomid larva | #18-20 | Deep two-fly rig on the drift from the dam; 1.5 m below the indicator. |
| Scud, olive | Gammarus scud | #14-16 | Dead drift close to the weed beds in the A section; strip it 5 cm when it stops. |
| CDC Caddis Emerger | Emerging Hydropsyche | #16 | Swing it through the riffle above Little Hole in the last hour of light. |
| Grey RS2 | Baetis emerger | #20-22 | Fish the surface film with a 5-metre leader and a 30 cm tippet of 6X. |
The dressing plate
On this river
Cicada years
In a strong cicada year, which arrives on its own cycle, the big rainbows stop looking at anything else for two to three weeks. The insect is clumsy, loud and lands with a thud, which means a foam fly dropped from 30 cm above the surface out-fishes a delicate presentation. Fish the shaded cliff-side willows in the middle hours of the day.
Long drifts on a wide river
The Green is too wide to reach the far bank, so the useful cast is a 20-metre downstream mend that keeps the fly in the near seam for eight seconds longer than a straight cast would. Use a stack mend rather than a single curve and let the indicator travel in the same lane as the fly.
Reading scud water
Scuds live in weed, not in gravel. On the Green that means the slow, weedy margins between the fast lanes, and the fish that are on scuds are usually within two metres of the bank. If you are fishing the middle of the river you are fishing for mayfly eaters only, and you are ignoring most of the biomass.