The adult dragonfly represents a steak meal to a trout. This fly is an
insect hunter and eats a lot of little bugs. The trout would have to eat allot
of those same insects as the adult dragonfly in order to match what the dragonfly
represents as food. Jumping
Trout So why
spend all that energy in eating little bugs when all you have to do is be an expert
jumper and on target. Well,  that
is what the brown and rainbow trout has mastered in Chile and Argentina. It took
me a while to figure out why the trout at Lago Yelcho in Chile liked to jump four
feet into the air. When I first fished Lion's Bay (a quiet and grassy bay), and
saw all the trout sailing through the air I thought this was going to be easy
fishing. We were going to be catching some real big rainbow's. Well, two years
later we finally got the right fly.
These fish had developed the precise technique of stalking and jumping for the
adult dragon and they did not want to take anything else. Their were so many dragons
flying around that the trout could not pass up the opportunity to stalk a hovering
dragon and shoot him down with that missile effect of his whole body coming out
of the water. We actually saw a large fish following a slow moving dragon and
when the fly stopped and hovered, out shot a large rainbow trout and the dragonfly
was gone. We knew that we would have to make up a good imitation of a full size
dragon and that is what we did. Casting
and Presentation
Over the years there has been a lot of different ties for the adult dragonfly.
Some had posed some problems with the casting, as the wings tend to twirl your
leader when the fly is in the air and so you are constantly straightening out
the line.
The presentation is very important with this fly. It is best if the water is still
or even better with a bit of a ripple so that the trout cannot get a good look
at the fly. In any case the fly must not be moved so as to give it the hovering
effect. In order for trout to take a hovering dragon 3-4 feet above the water
he must be coming from down deep and when he is looking up he sees the dragon
as if above the water. If you move the fly this will break the water surface causing
the trout to know that the dragon is not where it should be and thus he will not
make his run, but instead he might come up slowly to investigate and that is what
you do not want.
You can get very precise with presenting this fly to a hunting trout and waiting
for the take is longer than you would expect, but it will happen and you better
not be looking at the beautiful scenery.
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