FISHING SMALL FLIES - ALASKA STYLE

SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

By now we’ve pretty much established that you can catch one Arctic Char after another by fishing an orange Wonder fly on the surface or swinging a similar fly pattern below the surface, so today Jon and I are heading to the Moose Hole to attempt to catch rising char on size 16 Irresistibles with white calf tail wings. As it turns out, there is a sparse hatch of a white moth-like insect and the char do rise to the hatch.

The Moose Hole is a perfect place to fish the hatch. It’s a long, glassy pool full of char.  Now and then you’ll see one of them rise and take one of the “moths” from the surface. The trick is to cast your Irresistible across and upstream to attain a drag-free drift. If you are persistent a char will eventually rise to the fly and take it. And for reasons I can’t explain that is an absolute hoot. Here we are in the land of large, gaudy pink flies fished to silver or king salmon and other concoctions called Flesh flies and egg patterns and we are catching 20-inch plus Arctic char on “tiny” size 16 dry flies that come close to matching the hatch.

I tried to catch a sample of the “moth-like” insect to photograph and offer up as further evidence, but they proved elusive. You have to be here I guess. We can’t stop hooting and hollering every time we get a strike. I have to believe that this joy we’re experiencing catching char on a size 16 dry flies ultimately has to do with the incredible abundance of fish on this little creek. We feel absolutely comfortable making the fishing a little more difficult because we know we can catch all the fish we want using more traditional Alaska fly patterns. You have to wonder how often that happens anywhere else.