By: Mike Skoczen, NCFF 

Fishing the Trico Spinner Fall in State College, PA

I went armed with many of the same flies that produced so well for me the previous year and many of them continued to produce some nice results. Flies like the Elk Hair Caddis, Trico Spinners, and Blue Winged Olives (all size 20 or smaller) all produced fish for me. Flies like foam beetles and ants that produced so well last year hardly made their way out of my fly box this year. The big producer of the trip hands down was a size 20 bead head pheasant tail. This little fly consistently produced fish all day long, every day. I had a great time landing my share of fish that ranged from around 2” long ( I landed three fish from 2” – 4”) up to over 15” long.

Before I go further, let me describe the rig that I was casting. Trico imitations come in two forms, a male imitation and a female imitation. The male is all black while the female has a light colored body and black thorax. The trout seem to key on one sex or the other during the spinner fall, I think it is because they fall at different times during the hatch. With that in mind I was casting a two fly rig that had a female Trico spinner as the lead fly and a male Trico spinner about 24” back as the training fly. At this time most of the fish were taking the female imitation.

The most memorable fish was a brown trout that was about 13” or 14” long who did a little fishing of his own. It was Sunday morning and I was fishing the Trico spinner fall around 9:00 in the morning. I was casting to a group of fish that were obviously enjoying a morning meal of Trico spinners. I had already picked off a few of them when I set the hook into this particular fish. I played the fish to landing distance and reached down to land the fish by hand since I don’t often carry a net in the summer. I had a gentle grip on the fish when suddenly it flipped its tail one last time and shot out of my hand. Here’s the visual, me in the 

water, fly rod in my left hand held high, my right hand in the water with the tippet that was connected to the trailing fly rapidly sliding over my hand as the fish tried to swim away from me. In my mind I knew what was coming next, and sure enough, the hook of the second fly became buried in my hand as the fish struggled away.

Now I have a fly rod in my right hand that is connected to a leader that is connected to a fish that is connected to another fly that is stuck in my right hand. In the blink of an eye this trout had managed to embed the hook of the trailing fly all the way to the hook bend into my right hand. Needless to say, I was in a pickle. I placed the fly rod under my arm as the fish was still struggling to get away (pulling the hook deeper into my hand) and I tried to break the tippet connected to the trailing fly. This little scenario lasted about 30 seconds longer until the fish threw the hook out if its mouth and swam happily away. I laughed to myself a little as I tried to remove the hook out of my hand with my hemostats. I thought of this trout swimming back to its trout buddies and telling them the story of the big one (me) that got away.

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