I fished the Jefferson a few days ago, and while I was hiking back upriver to retrieve a brand new streamer setup out of the bushes, I looked down in the rocks and what did I see? Midnight stonefly cases. Good news to an affirmed dry fly fisherman like myself. It has been a long spring of heavy nymphs, strike indicators, and big streamers. For me the real fun begins with dry fly season. On the Madison and Big Hole, dry fly season kicks off with the Salmonfly hatch, then by mid-July the little bugs start, caddis, yellow sallies, and some mayflies. Along with the little bugs come the seldom seen but often fished Midnight stones.
It took me years to finally figure out what was going on with these interesting bugs. I kept seeing big (size 6 and 8) empty stonefly cases on the banks more and more each day, but never saw any of the adults.
The mystery was solved one night after a late encounter at the Gravel Bar. Someone had the brilliant idea of dropping in a boat at 1:00 in the morning for a little fishing. It was dead dark but you could hear the fish going off. It sounded like someone was throwing rocks in the water.
One of us finally came up with a flashlight, and when we shined it out over the inky darkness of the
Madison river we saw stoneflies skittering over the water everywhere, and obviously the fish were seeing them too. We fished for an hour or two with mediocre results. I couldn’t figure out why there were so many fish coming up, and they were so hard to catch. We finally pulled into the evening hole and we all got out to wade. I was standing there with my line hanging in the water straight downstream, fly dragging on the surface.
Bam! 17-inch Rainbow out of about 8 inches of water.
I thought that was kind of strange. Not exactly the Orvis-endorsed dead drift that we were all used to fishing. My next cast I threw straight out and instead of classic upstream mend, used for a dead drift, I mended down, Steelhead-style and allowed the fly to swing on the surface, cutting a nice little v-wake behind it.
Wham! We cracked the code. The fish kept eating until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer.
As the summer went on I spent more time looking for these elusive little bugs, and I found them, lots of them. All you had to do was roll the dry rocks on the river bank. They spent the day hidden in the cracks and crevices on the bank and came out at night to do their thing. They are an interesting little bug. The females are huge, size 4 or 2 the size of a salmonfly, they look like big black salmonflys with full wings, and they are also few in number compared to the males. The males are really strange. They have de-evolved their wings. They have wing pads on their backs, but they are totally useless for flying. Instead their preferred mode of propulsion is by running, and oh boy can they run! They are fast little buggars and can even run on the water. This is why the twitch is so important when fishing the midnight stone.
I fish it two ways, first is from a moving boat fishing close to the bank, all the little soft pools and little back eddies. I like to throw it in close and let the current drag it out. The other way is wading and fish it on the swing. Throw it out mend down and let it swing through the holes or through the runs. It can be tough to keep a normal dry fly floating as you jerk it through water or drag through rough waves. Enter the “Chubby Chernobyl” It is a fly made of all synthetics, all lighter than water, a foam body and a white synthetic wing. Easy to see and floats like a cork, and you can’t fish it wrong.
As July turned to August things all started making sense. There always seemed to be a dead spot on the Madison around the first two weeks of August. Same situation every day—good fishing first thing in the morning, then by 9:00 the bottom would drop out and it would be slow the rest of the day. It turns out that the adult population of midnight stones peaked around the first two weeks of august. I started fishing earlier and earlier every morning. I was actually picking up clients about 4:00 in the morning. At first it was hard to get people out of bed, but after one good morning of twitching dries everyone was more than willing to go out on the dawn patrol.
Now that I know what I am looking for I see them on almost all
rivers in southwest Montana. They are a great bug because the hatch is spread out over most of the summer. You start seeing a few cases late June with the peak being the first two weeks of August, but you continue to see fresh cases all the way through September. For the last 10 years there has been a strange absence of grasshoppers.
Hoppers are what used to carry our dry fly fishing into fall streamer fishing. Last year I think I only saw 4 or 5 free floating hoppers out there in the middle doing the back stroke, in the past you would see 4 or 5 at the same time. Yet you still catch fish on hoppers. I think the fish are used to seeing midnight stones and that’s what is carrying us for dries through the summer. Why else would hopper fishing be so good at 5:00 in the morning.
Next time you wake up at 5:00 in the morning and can’t go back to sleep, why not slip out for a little early morning dry fly fishing?