Mini Me Coachman and Coviello's emerger
Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2022 11:21 am
Some days the moon and stars all line up, the fish decide to eat, and the flies chosen were on the menu. Spent most of the morning searching for fish on a section of the middle Deschutes that flows through my neighborhood. I had little to show for my efforts other than a couple grabs and a couple LDR's. I decided to walk about a half mile upstream to an area that I have had some success on other occasions. Today, that was a good decision. The first 50 yards didn't produce even a grab but I continued to swing through the rest of the long run and finally got a grab. The next cast through that same area produced the first of what would turn out to be the best hour of fishing I'd had on this water. I was fishing with a size 18 version of Otto's coachman variant on the point and one of Jerry Coviello's moose mane emergers. The fish were eating both flies but it seemed the fish preferred the emerger. I switched out the top fly and put on Coviello's pheasant tail emerger. That combo produced fish on every cast for about 45 minutes and included two doubles. Normally, I would have the larger fly on point but today the reverse worked best.
Those of you who receive FFI's Flyfishers magazine will find Coviello's patterns in the summer 2022 edition.
Those are much better pictures of the out of focus, fish eaten versions I've attached to this little story. All of these fish came out of the same 25 yards of river and the bite ended as quickly as it had begun. I've never found a concentration of trout like this at any other time on this water. In a couple days this water will be unfishable as irrigation ends and the water taken from the river upstream is returned to the river.
Glad I had this nice day on my neighborhood water and thanks to Newriverspey for the inspiration of his beautiful Coachman Variant. My size 18 was an experiment, working with using oversized feathers for the hackles. I tied in both the orange dyed pheasant and a natural pheasant using the distributed feather method to get the blended hackle similar to Otto's version. The size 18 experiment excluded the golden pheasant tail. This fly counted for about as many fish as the emerger by the end of the day and will become a regular edition to my box.
Those of you who receive FFI's Flyfishers magazine will find Coviello's patterns in the summer 2022 edition.
Those are much better pictures of the out of focus, fish eaten versions I've attached to this little story. All of these fish came out of the same 25 yards of river and the bite ended as quickly as it had begun. I've never found a concentration of trout like this at any other time on this water. In a couple days this water will be unfishable as irrigation ends and the water taken from the river upstream is returned to the river.
Glad I had this nice day on my neighborhood water and thanks to Newriverspey for the inspiration of his beautiful Coachman Variant. My size 18 was an experiment, working with using oversized feathers for the hackles. I tied in both the orange dyed pheasant and a natural pheasant using the distributed feather method to get the blended hackle similar to Otto's version. The size 18 experiment excluded the golden pheasant tail. This fly counted for about as many fish as the emerger by the end of the day and will become a regular edition to my box.
