mending the dry fly

Hi folks, Guided yesterday morning on the Lamoille and the fly fishing was fantastic.  The Lamoille was 64 to 65 degrees yesterday morning. Flow was just slightly above the seasonal average. I took out a repeat guest who wanted to improve on his dry fly fishing.  Lucky for us the fish have been rising like crazy on the Lamoille.  Under foggy skies and the sun did not really poke its head through until after 10:00am we cast to rising fish all morning.  We had 24 trout come to the dry fly yesterday morning.   Not much hatching except some #18 micro caddis after 9:00am.  I am pretty sure the fish were sipping #14/#16 drowned flying ants that have been coming off in droves lately in the afternoon.  We cast a #16 peacock caddis and a #14 hare's ear parachute.  We worked on up stream mending, down stream mending, a reach mend, a v-mend, and the old Catskill style down stream feed.  We fished slow water that was fed by gently riffles with lots of in stream boulders.  We landed 16 trout with them being a combination of stocked rainbows and wild rainbows.  Once again the wild rainbows really out fought the stocked fish.  Mending is always the key ingredient when trout fishing.  More often that not the fish are eating a good drift and the fly is irrelevant.  Awful lot of fun watching trout eat off the surface.  Just crazy good fishing for August.  Still lots of cased #16/#18 caddis on rocks and #12/#14 Isonychia shucks on rocks.  Looks like a return to summer this week so the big water might warm up.  Carry your thermometer.  Hot days ahead with not really cool nights.  Back to bass fishing and small streams.  I am off for a few days to attend a family wedding.  Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home.  Have Fun, Willy