The Deep Dish dishes on the fish
For those of you that follow our site here, you know that we're fanatical about field-testing our patterns and tweaking them as needed. The Deep Dish Callibaetis, tutorial and fly design found here, has continued to sizzle on our trips -- both still water and even rivers.
As with any field-test flies we throw, we usually try to fish them side-by-side with other patterns to see how they stack up and we try to fish them in a variety of waters to get a better idea of how they'll perform. As with my first rounds of field-testing, the most recent results prompted this update.
Just a few days ago, we hit yet another high mountain lake that held good numbers of native Bonneville cutthroat. Early on, the dry fly action was insane and we didn't really have any reason to try a dropper, but eventually the fish went deeper with the sun rising higher, so I decided to throw on a dropper. After a few unsuccessful midge patterns and a damsel pattern, I decided to go with the Deep Dish. My fear was that the fish had already retreated too far for a simple dropper from a hopper. Nonetheless, I tied on the Deep Dish Callibaetis and the first cast resulted in a swing and a miss. The next two casts were similar. Then on the fourth or fifth cast, with hits on all preceding attempts, I was into a solid fish.
And so it went for the next hour or so, until we left, catching fish after fish after fish. Granted the fish ended up also turning onto damsels later, but during this non-hatch time period, there was just something about the pattern that got some attention.
So once again, a pattern has moved onto the varsity team in the fly box. As Hannibal always said "I love it when a plan comes together..."
