Unless you actually want to use your brain.

The Salmon Fly hatch on the South Fork of the Snake in Idaho. It's suprising, sloppy, unpredictable, exciting, nerve racking, and just a rush...a lot like my casting is that time of year.

I once bumbled into the mid-summer "whitefly" hatch along the Susquehanna River in northcentral PA...it was fifteen minutes of insanity between the smallmouths, bats and swallows flying around. Sorta like standing in a mid-river blizzard, with everything around you trying to eat the "snowflakes". I'd love to experience it again, but haven't been able to hit the timing quite on the nose.

Another fun one was the coffinfly hatch along Penns Creek near State College, PA. I'm still trying to figure out where all of those really BIG bugs came from all of a sudden...creepy, but cool. And the trout went bananas, of course. -Bob

correction: cirrusimage.com/ephemeroptera_mayflies.htm

Thinking back to a rookie on the water who once told me I had just missed the Wooly Bugger Hatch...and he was serious.

Hexagenia. Bigger smallmouths early in the evening, on nymphs. Smaller smallies and all sizes of cutthroats as dusk begins. Pollution's killing the hatch on my lake, but there's still a dozen days a year when the the swallows, bats, a buddy and I have a circus until the stars come out.

I'm torn between a caddis hatch and blue wing olive hatch.

While there are a number of great hathches on the fly water of the upper Pere Marquette here in Michigan, my favorite is the Gray Drake (Siphlonurus quebecensis) which seem to last most June and into of July, mostly at or after dark. If you prefer daylight fishing I think BWO's and Sulphers are the best all around for early / mid summer. Of course the Hex is the most talked hatch about around these parts, but I find it too sporatic and unpredictable and many just anti-climatic...I guess the attraction is the thrill of the chase for some. While not a hatch per say, you can't never beat just plain old hoppers for all around fun and action.

My sister lived in Bellvue Iowa in the early seventys. At some point,maybe June, the Mayflies would hatch off the Mississippi at lock and dam #? There were so many that the town turned all the lights off and the only light was on the lock. In the morning the payloaders would come and scoop the bugs into dump trucks. They would be 6 inches deep on the window sills. AMAZING!

B Magren...WE had a good Gray Drake hatch on the Henry's Fork last season, and it is the spinner fall that generates the trout rises. WE have to have a high water Spring where the Drakes crawl out into backwater areas not available to trout, and then they come back to the river to lay their eggs, and die on the water. #12 parachue adams darkish bodied worked well, and 5-6Pm could be counted on consistently, but some falls were around noon.

Talked to Bob Jacklin last nite at a TU meeting that Bob put on a presention. I asked him what he thought was the reason for the decline in the big Teranarsys (salmonfly) hatch on the SF of the Snake....said he thought it was the decline in Willows along the bank.

Worms are the way to go to catch fish.