Hook Size: 14
The Perfect Fly Slate Dun Spinner is a imitation of the spinner stage of life of the mayfly. Once the dun reaches the banks, trees or bushes, it molts into a spinner, or the sexually mature adult. The males and females return to the water and mate in mid air, and eventually fall dead on the surface of the water where trout can easily dine on them. It should be fished on the surface and treated with floatant.
The “Perfect Fly” Slate Dun or Brown Slate Dun Spinner should be fished very
late in the afternoon and in some cases, on into the evening during some
hatches. If the weather is very hot, the spinner fall may not occur until the early
hours of the morning.
Presentation:
The Slate Dun female deposits her eggs over the same fast water areas they
hatched from. You may see them just before dark dancing above the riffles. It’s
nearly impossible to see them on the water after they have fell spent.
If there has been a hatch of Slate Duns there will be a spinner fall that afternoon
or evening. The only exception is as mentioned above, they sometimes fall in the
mornings. Late in the afternoon on the day of a hatch you should keep checking
overhead to see if any are congregated to mate. If you don’t look for them, you
will usually not even notice them.
About the only other way to determine if there’s a Slate Dun spinner fall
underway is to skim the surface of the water with a fine mesh net to catch
whatever is drifting downstream. This is the best method to use. Some of these
nets can be folded up in a small container that remains on your landing net.
In most situations you should use an up or up and across presentation for the
spinner. After the spinner fall has ended, you may want to fish the tail ends of the
riffles and runs and the heads of the pools below them. The spinners will
congregate in these types of places and when they do the trout will usually feed
on them. The trout are not easy to see because they sip the spinners from the
water leaving only a slight rise ring. Also check the eddies out. Trout often feed
in the eddies where the spinners tend to collect.
If the Slate Dun spinners emerge and fall on fast flowing smooth water, a
downstream presentation may be required.
Copyright 2013 James Marsh
