Malad River, ID

Outing Information

Fish Caught

Rainbow Trout

Weather

Other Patterns Tried

• #16 Pheasant Tail
• Tan Elk Hair Caddis
• #12 Brown Bivisible

Fishing Partners

No fishing partners were saved with this outing.

Waypoints

No waypoints were saved with this outing.

Notes

I went fishing on the Malad last night. When I got there, I was the only person, so I thought I had the river to myself. I started off by stalking through some tall grass to where some carp were rising - they are big fish and I just wanted to catch one. This wasn't the prime hole, but I wanted to try to catch a big carp before I moved on to the better holes. It was windy as hell with a couple caddis skittering along the top, so I put on a bivisible and had 3 hits on it, one of which was a carp. All 3 got off. One problem with the bivisible is it's hard to get a good hook set with it. I then went to an elk hair caddis and a ginger emergent sparkle pupa and caught one 8" trout on the pupa with a splash or two on the caddis. I was surprised that the adult caddis didn't get more splashes. Then again, trout weren't slashing most of the adults I saw on the water, either. I changed the dropper and put on small nymphs and had no luck. After awhile I put a #18 gray emergent sparkle pupa on and had 3 rises in maybe 4 casts, missing all fish, before getting a good trout on. I was trying to not get into the water, and as a result, the fish was able to run my line under a rock and snapped the dropper off and was free. :( I put on another #16 pupa and caught 3 or so 8" fish out of the hole before it died off. I tried going down to the mouth where it dumps into the Snake and wouldn't you know it, someone was there. So I start fishing/wading upstream to the one big, good hole on this section of river. I was able to pluck the occasional 8-10" fish out of pocket water - almost all of the fish hit the pupa, not the adult caddis. I get up to a little below the big hole and wouldn't you know it, someone is fishing there! Fucker. I waded back downstream back to my original hole and now someone was in that one!!! So I had to climb out of the river and walk upstream a ways to some okay water, but not great. That pissed me off. And by this time, it's very close to dark. I focused on a small section of river and saw a 12" fish splash behind a rock. A few casts later I had the fish on the pupa. I caught a few other smaller fish as well.

So unfortunately, I wasn't able to fish a prime hole as it got dark with the caddis hatch. That saddened me. But I did keep the 12" fish because I wanted to see what he had been eating. I cut open his gullet when I got home and here's what I found, in order of number found:

lots and lots of vegetation packed into the stomach
13 mayfly nymphs - #18-#20 - dark brown backs, tan undersides
10+ green rockworms - #16-#28 (tiny)
5 caddisfly pupa - #14-#16 - yellow bodies, amber to lt brown shucks, brown wings and head
2 caddisfly adult - #14 - yellow bodies, tan wings
1 2" long, 1/32" wide skinny worm, light brown/cream
1 potato bug

What's interesting about the above? First, I was surprised at how much vegetation was packed into the stomach. I imagine this means that trout see occasional small clumps of vegetation in the current and eat them because:
- they need the bulk to push food through their system, or
- they know many small insects are embedded in the vegetation
Second, I was surprised at how many small nymphs were in the stomach. One thing to note, though - the 7 caddisflies had close to, if not more, the same bulk as all of the rockworms and mayflies combined. The trout would have to see them as a much more substantial meal.

One thing I'm trying to figure out now is why I had success with the gray emergent sparkle pupa. I did have a brown and yellow pupa pattern that would have been a better color match, but of course I didn't try it. :) But the gray did substantially better than the ginger when I was starting off, yet there were no gray caddisflies in the stomach. Maybe it was just a closer match than the light-colored fly.