Below are a couple of images of mine in the new issue of The FlyFish Journal (Issue 9.3).
Zac Mayhew and John Huber on a drakeless evening on Silver Creek. For those of you who don't know, Silver Creek opens each year on the Saturday of Memorial Weekend, which is this coming Saturday.
Brown Drakes can start anytime, even before opening weekend (hopefully that doesn't happen) and it's a hatch that really kickstarts our season. Many of us look forward to it all year. It doesn't last long (about a week) and usually happens in the evening.
Catching the Drake event on the first evening means, usually at least, fewer people around and fish keyed in on emerging bugs and duns. It's less complex in many ways. There's no debate, for example, between using a spinner or dun or how far upstream the hatch has progressed.
In any event, a few of us start showing up on Silver Creek every evening once we think conditions are good enough. It can be burdensome for family members who are not interested and stay at home on years when it could be as many as fourteen consecutive evenings without any sign of bugs. I think fourteen consecutive drakeless nights is my record (It wasn't too long ago that the first night of Drakes was June 13). Compound that with the fact that once it starts, non-interested family members are potentially left in the dust for an additional week.
The image above was one of those drakeless evenings where the downside is a beer or two with friends and a stunning evening.
Above, John Huber throws a mouse on the early end of what he and I now think of as our best mousing night ever. Silver Creek.