Our Brother from the Denver Fellowship, Greg Krochta, attended a seminar by Peter Stitcher, an aquatic biologist, who owns a fly fishing company in Colorado.  Here are Greg’s notes for us to read and heed…...

On Thursday evening I attended the Cherry Creek Trout Unlimited monthly meeting, held at the Parker Library, where the guest speaker was Peter Stitcher, an aquatic biologist (and self-proclaimed Chief Fly Geek!) who owns Ascent Fly Fishing and River Oracle companies right here in Littleton, CO. His presentation was called “Match the Hatch in 2 Minutes,” and what follows are my notes from his P.A.U.S.E. and M.A.T.C.H. teaching techniques…

PAUSE before you MATCH…

Where do you look for what flies to use, on any river?

Parking lot to the river – What’s crawling and flying nearby?

Above the water – What flight patterns do you see? Identify them as mayflies (even sine-wave flight pattern), caddis (caddis=chaotic, looping pattern), stoneflies (straightforward, like chinook helicopters “on a mission”)

Under the water – Bugs spend 99% of their lifecycle underwater. Use a seine in the riffles and find out what nymphs to use! Trout feed underwater at least 75% of the time.

Spider webs – these guys are the PhDs of entomologists! What’s in a web is a fresh indication of what dry flies are around.

Edges & Eddies – Look in backwaters and river’s edge for back-swirling water and see what’s in there!

…then…

Most abundant – tie-on what you see/seine the most of!

Approximate size and profile – the names are not as important as matching what you see in size and general shape.

Trout feeding behavior – “join” the trout where they are visibly feeding. Mouthing and side-sweeping underwater? Nymphs. Noses, dorsal fin and tails breaking the surface? Emergers. Porpoising and heads-out? Dries

Color – Trout see the full spectrum underwater, but the colors fade as the water deepens. Trout also instinctively look for the biologic “outlier” in the water, so use flash, wire wraps, beads, etc to make it stand out from the rest!

Half an hour – time to reassess if not catching anything: 1st. Presentation, drift, and depth. 2nd. Fly choice.

Pretty intuitive stuff if you think about each aspect of the acronyms…my notes here only scratched the surface of what he had to say about each topic.

Peter is a great speaker, very humble, and a fisherman (not a guide) so, he emphasized to all that he can be reached on his personal cell-phone at anytime with questions about flies (send him pictures if you can’t figure out what you’re seeing or if you don’t know what’s in your box(es)), AND if you tell him when and where you’re going, he’ll tell you exactly what you need (they specialize in putting together fly boxes for your outing anywhere in the US with some advanced notice!). Got a specific fish you want to fish for? He’ll text/email you a map with pins placed and fishing holes marked…he keeps no secrets!

 For more information on him and Ascent Fly Fishing, go to ascentflyfishing.com , find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or call him directly at: 720-580-9558

Use online code: SCIFLY10 on the website for 10% off (one-time use per customer).

That’s about it for now guys! Hope you all can join us on a future outing, and get something out of my notes to make your next fly fishing trip more successful! Call or text me (or better yet, Peter directly) with questions on the PAUSE MATCH technique. I’ll also send out some email articles/links to articles with other interesting techniques that might be valuable too.