The Story of the ‘Nevermerger’- Awkward But Deadly (excerpts from Ebb & Flow Blogs)
Enlightenment comes through various stages. In fly tying design, you often stumble upon it accidentally- or through awkward tying. Often it is from what your tying vison wants to interpret as to what a fish sees and wants to select- or what you thought you saw. Nowhere did it become more obvious than when I did my recent Hallowed Waters Podcast recording. My guests were the new-age Goddard and Clarke of the English limestone chalk streams. Peter Hayes and Don Stazicker are modern day trout behavior empiricists. With their GoPro underwater cameras they study trout in the feral feeding environments. What they found just further supports what we knew and how the enlightened anglers fish.
In chatting about their newest book masterpiece: “The Flies that Trout Prefer”, they seemed fixated on how trout have an obsession with ” casualties – even shucks!” ( i.e. cripples/still borns/ for us Yanks- the Brits have found political correctness like we have years ago-pity!) We spent a good deal talking about all those stages of mayfly nymphs’ and caddis pupae helplessly stuck in the meniscal surface tension . It is in their opinion that here in the meniscus film- not so much riding above it like we build our dry flies to float, lies the hatch buffet table that the best seat in a trout stream restaurant is to be had.
I talked about this fly I tied last summer being a super game changer for me. Have you ever tied a fly that looks like a piece of crap- or one that looks like an error, and yet it is insanely deadly? A fly that looks like it came off the vise from your first tying lesson. Certain unique situations dictate an unconventional look at proper traditional fly designs that match the hatch and the prey facsimile imprinted in a selective trout’s foraging imprint. Such is the case with the icy cold Catskill tailwaters. Here 90 F days in August still see rivers starting out in the mid 40F water temperature until the high sun hits the waters.
Nowhere is that more true than on the upper tailwater of my beloved Neversink River next to our family’s summer home. The water dumping in to the already cold depths of the Neversink Reservoir comes from the upper stretches and the tallest peak in the Catskills-Slide Mountain. It is some of the clearest water on the planet. When the tiny blue-winged olives of summer ( multiple species)come off, they float for what seems like eternity due to the ice-cold waters that make it difficult for them to emerge. Not only is emergence delayed, it is often smothered and with” casualties ” as the Brits call them. They are often stuck in there shucks, wings deformed, laying on their sides and difficult to upright themselves due to the icy waters and flat placid flows, where the meniscal tension has its strongest hold. The trout pound these crippled helpless victims.
The wild brown trout and indigenous brookies in its ultra clear upper stretches’ are without doubt’ the snootiest in the Catskills- the East Branch fish probably hold the pinnacle claim to the kings and queens of snooty. It was August and the #20 olives come off in the afternoon- spinner falls are closer to dusk. The trout I have been fishing to on long, deep pool with steep banks were super selective for days even to my best cdc compara/ no-hackle emerger patterns- I was having a bitch of a time with refusals . Though it was hot and sunny during the day, the nighttime’s in the Catskills were going down to very cold temps, Thus the water only had limited heating during the afternoon. I saw some very large browns feeding to what appeared to be nothing. Rusty spinners I first thought, But that wasn’t it. They were true ‘bulging rises’- backs and tails, not sipping rises. You could clearly see the upright wings of olive adults that hatched and floated a good ways-most duns were refused. Scratching my head and pulling my hair out, it was going on three days of refusals- something had to give! My Scotch whiskey consumption at cocktail hour was being watched diligently by my wife Laurie as I explained my daily conundrum to the lodge guests.
On a mission with a surface seine I started to find still-born/cripple casualties , along with developed olive emergers with crunched, slanted and folded wings- almost caddis-like. They had a teardrop shape as the tips seemed glued to a point. Maybe my patterns I was fishing had too upright and proper wings, and were riding way too high and perfect, even though I had them tied emerger style.
Thus I went back to the vise and I created what I thought looked as close to the natural that was flushed with stuck wings. I tied the cdc puff wings in upside down ( I don’t recall ever seeing these cdc micro oiler plumes tied like this- but correct me if I’m wrong) The wings were almost slanted and spinner style. I guess the fish could have interpreted the pattern for a spinner, which is cool also, since they also are difficult to see from an anglers viewpoint. The brown z-lon shuck signifies the emerger/dun made famous by Caucci/Nastasi and Matthews.
Neveremerger Pattern : Hook: #18 or 20 Daiichi Special Wide Gap Hook 1140-Thread: Uni 6/0 Dark Olive- Tail- Brown Z-Lon/Darlon for hanging nymph shuck- Body- Tapered Dark Olive Thread -tied cone shaped to thorax, dark olive dubbing for head, Hareline Micro CDC Plumes-:Dark Dun- tied in reverse and slanted low like spinner or caddis wings.
The first day with the new pattern I targeted three very stubborn large fish- ones that have given me fits for the past week on the same stretch of water. Truly shocked, I picked them all off one by one with the new pattern after just one or two drifts over them. Since the fly was rather flushed in the film, I had to make a quick mend when the fly landed for the drag to let me know where the pattern is, since I didn’t grease it up so it didnt ride too high and visible. I then threw stack mends at the 18 foot leader for a very long drag-free float. It is so imperative for your fly to come into the fish’s window before any glimpse of the leader. ( I only added cdc oil to the wings and just letting the natural buoyancy of the cdc hang it in the meniscus. In hindsight I could probably add a tiny puff of orange poly)
It is imperative when fishing minutiae to set the hook slowly and low for the wide gape 20 hook to grab the best that can be hoped for. If the fish bulged near where I thought my pattern was, I set the hook-rod tip near the water and cross current to maximize tension on the small hook. The largest was a beast of 22 inches, the other two in the 19-20 inch range. I was shocked and elated how easy this was after days of frustration. But I was done. Joe “Catskills” Ceballos and I took the new pledge -“3 and done!” We ask all very lethal and superiorly technical and talented anglers to due the same ion heavily fished wild trout waters where fished get pounded and prciked to death!- often making them too parnoid to even feed!- we’ve seen it. Or perhaps spending more time photographing and just enjoying nature- perhaps tie flies outside on a nice day- but this discussion is a whole seperate matter for another time.
In hindsight, on a tiny #20 olive, in the middle of an August afternoon, with ultra-selective wild browns, I was truly impressed. It was the perfect testimonial that the fly was deadly. Thus we have the ‘Neveremerger’. A pattern where I tie the cdc micro oiler plumes in backwards, since the bent back/ stuck wings had quill-like tips to them in the natural cripple I was finding where often the wings were still stuck to the exoskeleton shuck. The wings were thick and bulging, which the micro oiler plumes do as they soak up water, yet float like the duck they should . The pattern looked like the first ‘No-Hackles’ I tied of Swisher-Richards design, where the duck quills always twisted backwards, and never stood upright. The pagttern with its downward slanted wings also can mimick a spinner.
Thus here is an example of what looks like a poorly tied fly having producing such amazing results. I can’t wait to try it during winter Baetis hatches on spring creeks in a snowstorm. I had my best BWO day ever on Christmas Eve in a whiteout blizzard on Mossy Creek in my Virginia-sweet southern memories of the past.
Author’s typical Puglisi Trigger point BWO . Though it is extremely effective tied like this, this one was refuse repeatedly. Maybe its the upright wings that differentiate the stills from the often perfectly tied adults that heavily fished trout often refuse since everyone fishes them