Hook Size: 10
well gets some action from the brown drake spinner fall. You can also catch trout feeding
on the spinners early in the morning, just after daylight. They will collect in the eddies and
calm pockets behind logs and boulders and along the banks. In many cases, depending
on the stream, they will collect at the tail of a pool and sometimes the head of a pool if
there is a run or riffle between pools. Trout will continue to feed on the spent spinners
well after the spinner fall has occurred. Fishing early in the mornings can be effective.
The problem with fishing the spinner fall at night is determining when it occurs. Since the
Brown Drake mayflies hatch in the evenings it may be near impossible to determine
exactly what is going on. If it is a well lite night, then it may be possible to see the spinner
fall. If so, you could be in for some great fly fishing.
Presentation:
A down and across presentation almost always works best in the slow moving water that
brown drake spinners are found in. If you are fishing at night, then as with the dun, you
want to try to get positioned to where you are taking advantage of the available light. You
want to move around as little as possible. If the stream is such that you can do so,
meaning it doesn’t have a lot of bushes and trees along the banks, it may be best to fish
from the bank. It is certainly the easiest method to use at night. We have been able to
catch trout on the Perfect Fly Brown Drake spinner imitation in meadow streams where it
was possible to fish along the banks. If it is a well lit night, this can be a very effective way
to fish.
Don’t overlook fishing the spinner imitation early in the morning after a hatch. That can
also be effective. It is best to fish in an upstream direction and make cast in the areas the
spinners are likely to have collected in. Don’t look for feeding trout. You probably want be
able to see them eating the spent spinners. They just sip them in and make very little
surface disturbance when they do so. Just blind cast to the most likely areas the spinners
would have collected.
