# 38 Match the Hatch

Match the hatch, What the heck are they talking about?.

What the heck are people talking about when you hear them say “Match the hatch”?

If you are learning to fly fish for the first time, or if you have some experience you may have heard this term more than once, and wondered to yourself?

What are they talking about, “chickens:?

You are in luck, today we are going to spend a few minutes to learn what exactly is “matching the hatch”.

So, I’m admittedly a true “dry fly junkie” I live for the part of the season when I can cast dry flies all day long. I may not catch as many fish as a person who is nymphing, but every fish I get on the surface is a total party for me. I really do not discriminate, little fish or big fish; they are all great in my eyes.

Hatch, are we talking chickens?

Not really chickens, but it’s not too far from the truth, so let’s get right into it. In the past I talked about Entomology and the life cycles of aquatic insects, and if you remember we talked how they go through different life cycles!

For the rest of this discussion, we are just going to use the Mayfly, (order Ephemeroptera) for our example. I’m not forgetting about: Caddis, Midge, Stonefly, Mosquitoes, Moths, Dragon flies, Damsel flies, Craneflies, Black flies. I probably forgot one or two, but you can see how many insect are using water as part of their reproductive process.

So, I’m going to break this down in a silly way but bear with me you’ll get it.

Let’s think about the Mayfly as a Hamburger. You can get a Hamburger, a Cheeseburger, Chili burger, Swiss burger, I think you get the point. Just like the burger there are very many different versions or variations of the Mayfly, but it still is a Hamburger. The burger is always the same basic construction, it has a patty, a bun, and some toppings, Mayflies are the same, body, legs, wings, tails, abdomen.

Life cycles:

If we take a look at the corny fridge art we can see how insects’ life cycle evolves. First it begins with an egg that is deposited to the surface of the water, by an adult.

The egg sinks to the bottom of the river or lake and the egg then hatches into a Nymph. These nymphs can live on the bottom of a watershed for as long as a year or more. The Nymph eats, drinks, goes to school, has friends, gets arrested, until a certain time of year rolls around. This time of the season can be different for the different Hamburgers, but no matter what, they all have internal timers that will go off eventually.

Once their timer goes off, the whole neighborhood can moves out at the same time, what I mean is all of the Bacon cheeseburgers will move out at the same time, and then maybe the Chili burgers will move out later that week, then followed by Swiss burgers.

When a bug moves out it simple means they are going to change into a different version. Think of how butterflies change, it’s the same thing.

How is a bug like a burger?

Glad you asked, because as a fly fisherman, you should know which form of fast food is being served at your local stream, river or lake. Now that you have a very basic idea of how an insect changes over its life span, we can talk more about how matching is going to come into the picture.

We talked in the past how fish can feed up to 80-90% of the time eating insects that live on the bottom of the watershed, or Nymphing. When it’s time and the Burgers start move out of the neighborhood, fish will see thousands of these little burgers all swimming toward the surface of the water, to hatch into a new bug.

Fish are very strange creatures, some are lazy, some are aggressive, some are really smart. When the time comes and the burgers are swimming upward, some of the fish will only eat the ones who are in route to the surface, meanwhile others will eat the ones that are in the middle of changing clothes from a nymph to an adult, while other fish will eat ones that are newborn, or still born on the surface of the water.

It is your job to figure which burger your fish are eating

If you are on the water and you see fish begin to rise to the surface you can simply watch the surface to see if you can actually see a fish grab an adult of the surface or are they grabbing the ones who are in process of splitting out of their cases. Another way is to watch the bubbles that are formed as the fish eats, but this we need to cover later. You will hear from other people when they talk about, “the fish were eating emergers, or they were eating adults”.

Why is this important:?

If you plan to follow a hatch and want to catch fish while they are feeding on the surface, you will need to be able to imitate the form, or current burger that the fish are eating at that particular moment.

This is where it can get a little tricky, if you are fishing on a river and there is a burger hatch going on, you “should” have with you several versions of hamburgers with you. When a hatch begins, some fish will always eat the burgers that are underwater, no matter what, while others will begin to eat the burgers that are just being born. As the hatch progresses other fish will only eat adult burgers from the surface of the water for several reason. On a new burger the wings need a few minutes to dry before they can fly, and smart fish know this, and will move into an area where these fresh burgers are concentrated, so a fish can literally just sit in one spot and eat fresh burgers for as long as they want, or until the burgers are gone.

Types of flies:

So, let’s break it down, you have a better idea of what’s going on when a river is going off with a hatch. You see fish poking their faces out of the water to feed on burgers all over the place. Let’s imagine you see a giant fish over next to a cut back, just lazily snacking on fresh burgers, and you try to catch him. You throw a Cheeseburger at this fish, and no love, so you try a Bacon burger and again no love, so you cast a blue cheeseburger and finally get him. What happened is you had to discover which stage of the bug that particular fish was eating at that time.

The game:

This is the best part of the game for me, it’s the whole reason I love to fish dry flies. Figure out which burger that fish is eating and give him the one he likes. Now back from imagination land, and how do burgers translate to real life?

When I go out to fish a hatch, I will carry in my fly box, Emerger flies, that will resemble the bug as it is trying to break out of its nymphal case, or shuck, at the surface of the water.  I have bugs with wings that are sloped back, to resemble bugs with wings not completely formed yet. Finally, I will have adult versions of the fly, on some of these adult flies I will tie patterns that have a case or shuck still attached to it, some people will even carry what is referred to as a “cripples”. Cripples are just flies that are not formed correctly, or wings that are broken. Certain times fish will key in on those slight differences, (these are the smart fish)

Delay of game “five yard penalty”:

As you are learning to toss fake bugs at live fish there is a penalty phase of “matching the hatch” and it is known as “the refusal”. Think of it as a five yard penalty in football, you have chosen the fly, made the greatest cast of your life, made a perfect drift, and then you see it! The fish looks up, sees your fly, slowly rises up coming to your fly, only to get so close (you would think the fish is licking it), but as your fish drifts back a mere inch beneath your fly only to say, “NO”, and then disappear back to the depths.

This is a refusal and believe me it hurts. There can be about 12,628 reasons a fish to refuse your fly. It could be bad drift, wrong cycle of the hatching insect, wrong size, wrong color, who knows what goes through a fish’s brain, but whatever it is, they are still called refusals.

You will never be able to know exactly which form of bug a fish will eat, but you can get a good idea from the good people at your local fly shop. These friendly folks know the local waters well and will be able to help with which patterns you should have on you. I have told you in the past that I used to guide Hot Creek in Central California.

When the seasonal hatches began you could literally set a clock by the fish. This is no B.S. you could tie on a # 18 Sparkle dunn at 9:45 in the morning, and then at around 10:30 switch to an adult like a CDC wing adult, and by 12:30 it was all over. But for a few hours a day, and about 2 weeks you could predict this on a daily schedule, (excluding weather events).

I hope that my Hamburgers were not too well done for your taste, but it seems a simple way to explain something that can be way to complicated.

Keep it simple and go have fun and grab a fish or two for me.

Cheers

Gary, AKA LaMachine