Something is bugging Robert Younghanz. That’s not an easy thing to do.
Younghanz, an aquatic entomologist and who goes by the title of ” ,” is the dude who measures the spider’s teeth or admires a yellow jacket’s striping rather than running for a can of Raid like the rest of us.
But if you really want to annoy him, just ask him about insect hatch charts.
“They give you these kind of generalized patterns that don’t take into account the local specifics of the area you want to fish,” Younghanz said. “It’s kind of like weather forecasting in a sense, where they look at a region and tell you the weather for that region in very general terms. It should be called a ‘fly chart,’ not a ‘hatch chart,’ based on stuff that works in that area. Because the hatches are all going to be different.”
Let’s take Colorado as a “for instance.” Just about any chart an angler looks at anywhere is going to recommend tying a grasshopper pattern on the end your fly line this week, and more than likely until the end of September. And while the classic “hopper-dropper” fishing rig is generally a good place to start as anglers head into the dog-day doldrums of August, the Bug Guy believes we can do one better.
“I’m a big beetle guy,” said Younghanz, creator of the . “Beetles are the largest single animal group in the world, with about 350,000 different kinds just that we know of. But it’s probably the most underfished dry-fly pattern in fly-fishing.”
Typically around this time of the summer, grasshoppers would fall into the top tier of terrestrial fly patterns for many Colorado fishermen. But after such a long, wet spring, the local grasshopper crop appears to have been delayed. Whether it bounces back remains to be seen.
A , when the wet spring that followed two years of grasshopper infestations whittled estimates from as high as 17 grasshoppers per square yard in state test areas to about three per square yard, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The chart for 2015 shows similarly light densities of less than three grasshoppers per yard in the majority of the state (387 million acres). Only about 18 million acres, most of them far from any fly-fishing, are predicted to see 15 or more per square yard.
The downturn in 2013 was credited to a bad-for-grasshopper bacteria promoted by the cold, wet spring. Farmers also contributed through spraying and other field management in 2011 and 2012. Meanwhile, drought depleted the grasshoppers’ resources as well.
As anglers await the outcome of the 2015 hopper hatch, Younghanz recommends expanding the walls of the terrestrial fly box. It’s incumbent upon fly-fishers to be keen observers of entomology, especially as we move into terrestrial season.
“I always ask people, ‘Do you have ants and beetles and wasps in your box?’ ” he said. “You don’t generally see a lot of wasp and bee patterns, but we actually have wasps in Colorado that swim in the water. They will go in and grab stuff to eat.”
It’s important to remember that trout are opportunistic eaters, generally consuming almost anything they can fit in their mouths, Younghanz said. If something falls in the water near a fish, it’s likely to be engulfed.
“There’s way more stuff out there terrestrial-wise than aquatic-wise,” Younghanz said. “Crickets don’t get all the love they need from fly-fishers, and katydids don’t get much love either. Two others to think about are termites — that’s a big one — and spiders. It’s just really hard to find a good spider pattern.”
The Bug Guy’s current go-to fly is the well-established pattern, an oversized terrestrial creepy-crawly that’s arguably more grasshopper than ant. But smaller, more traditional ant patterns should be a prevalent pattern in any fly box, Younghanz says, along with the oft-overlooked beetle.
Those two terrestrial fly patterns will work just about anywhere from high-mountain lakes to classic Western rivers.
“Grasshoppers are purely terrestrial, and they get fished a lot. But there are semi-aquatic beetles actually swim in the water. They’re not just inadvertently going into the water, they live there. That’s a big blind spot for a lot of people,” Younghanz said. “From the alpine to the desert, beetles have unprecedented adaptability to a variety of climates. The only place you don’t find them is the North and South Pole.”
And nobody knows that better than the fish.
“That’s really the best thing about terrestrials,” Younghanz said. “Do trout hit anything harder than a big hopper pattern or a big beetle? No, they don’t. That’s so cool.”
Scott Willoughby: swilloughby@denverpost.com or twitter.com/swilloughby
