The Grey Fox Hatch
Take advantage of this short window of opportunity to experience great bottom-to-top trout action.
By: Dan Kennaley
As we enter the third week of May, golden-hued grey fox mayflies begin to hatch on Ontario streams. They’re like the precious metal to the fly angler, as they’re a big enough meal to attract even the largest trout to the surface. With a good artificial and a perfect presentation, the table is set for some great dry fly action during the three weeks of the grey fox hatch.
For the longest time, entomologists recognized two early season mayfly hatches that involved the Stenonema genus. The March brown hatch was associated with Stenonema vicarium, while the grey fox hatch was associated with Stenonema fuscum. Now, entomologists have realized that what were described as two species are actually the same, and they have eliminated S. fuscum in favour of S. vicarium. Fly anglers, however, seem to prefer the grey fox moniker for the hatch, rather than March brown.
Nymph Notes
The grey fox nymph is an example of a clinger-type, in that it lives in faster water in a stream where it clings to the bottom of rocks. The nymph’s flattened, streamlined body and stiff legs make it ideally suited to its habitat. The natural is yellowish in colour, with brown markings, including distinctive lines on its legs, and it has three tails.
I tie a yellow artificial nymph to match the natural, weight the artificial by tying in two pieces of lead wire on either side of the hook shank, and then flatten the dubbed rabbit-fur body by wrapping the thorax with goldcoloured wire.
This nymph pattern can be fished by either casting into the shallows downstream, where the current will take the fly into faster water and cause it to rise to the surface, or it can be cast into faster water and directed into the shallows. This latter approach is a good one when it comes to grey fox nymphs, since they tend to migrate into slower, shallower water a few days before they hatch.
A Dun Deal
The nymph rises to the surface, where the skin splits at the wing case, and the dun crawls out. If the weather is cool, the dun hatch is heavier during the warmer part of the day. As the end of May stretches into the beginning of June and the weather becomes warmer, duns hatch throughout the day.
The grey fox dun is a creamy-gold with brown tones and has only two tails, as opposed to the nymph’s three. The dun’s legs are creamy coloured with the distinctive brown lines displayed by the nymph still present. Its wings are slightly translucent, with some creamy-yellow colouration and thin, black vein-like markings.
The grey fox dun can be matched with a No. 10 comparadun or haystack pattern. This style of dry fly is tied without hackle wound at the throat, so it floats low in the water and presents a more realistic silhouette. Dub urinestained belly fur from a vixen fox for the body of the fly. This material was made famous in a classic-style dry fly recipe developed by American Preston Jennings in the 1920s.
A trout typically will not move far to the right or left to take a fly, so try to cast directly upstream of a rising fish. Usually, I target an area about four or five feet upstream, because this distance provides some forgiveness if my presentation is not as fine as it could be.
The Spinner Dance
The newly emerged grey fox dun flies off to the safety of streamside vegetation, where it moults into a sexually mature spinner by shedding its dun skin. Spinners are the same basic colour as duns, although the colours are sharper and less creamy and the wings are now transparent, but with the same black vein-like markings.
Grey fox spinners appear at dusk to do their dance and to mate. After mating, females extrude egg balls at the end of their abdomens and deposit them into the stream. Female spinners then fall to the water’s surface to join already expired males, producing another great feeding opportunity for fish and another great fishing opportunity for anglers.
When spinners initially fall to the surface, they don’t necessarily assume a spent-wing position. Consequently, I keep fishing a comparadun pattern until it seems not to be working and only at that point will I switch to a No. 10 spent-wing pattern.
