Time. It’s not a luxury everyone has, so I try and flaunt it take advantage of it every chance I get. You see, some things that are supposed to run like clockwork don’t always keep their own timetable. An angler needs to be ready at a moment’s notice to pack and run to “The  X Hatch” (you supply the name of your particular hatch weakness).

Some Delphic Oracle blog post, magazine article, fishing forum or most likely a buddy, has elevated The  X Hatch to the pinnacle of hatch nirvana—the angler’s Empyrean (Icarus has much to teach the angler in this situation). It has been imbued with tales of such mythic proportions that it pulls you ever closer in a vortex of irrationality. Your mind worries it like a tongue does a chipped tooth.

What is it that can bring grown men to their knees, begging both boss and boss wife for permission to drop all vestiges of responsible adulthood and flee with abandon to River A for the hatch of all hatches? It is the Kryptonite Hatch.

“But wait a second,” you say, “shouldn’t I avoid Kryptonite?”

That’s right my hapless friend, you should avoid it! But it draws you in nonetheless, like Trichoptera to a bare 200 watt bulb, ever circling to that ninth level of hell.

As with all Kryptonite Hatches, yours has a “window of opportunity”—that optimal time after the hatch starts when the fish have focused on the hatch but haven’t gorged themselves beyond feeding. You want to hit that window dead center. The more fabled the hatch, the smaller the window, until you are down to Joseph Heywood’s The Snowfly (a book I quite enjoyed).

“So, when is the hatch?” you ask your benefactor.

“It usually comes off around the y day of z month,” you’re informed.

“What do you mean, ‘usually’ and ‘around’?” you ask.

“Oh…Well…You see…It…Um…”

This is most often accompanied by shuffling feet, more hemming and hawing and eyes focused on anything but you.

“Spit it out, man!” you finally bellow in annoyance.

“OK, OK. Sheesh. The problem is, it can be a bit unpredictable. There’s no guarantee it will happen on those specific days,” he informs you. “Or at all,” is meekly whispered.

“What? You mean the flight and hotel I booked over three months ago should be canceled? The vacation days I’ve already scheduled should be rescinded?”

“Uh…yeah, that’s what I mean. In fact, we’ll need to be pretty mobile because the Kryptonite Hatch could come off any time or place along the 60 mile length of River  A . Or possibly its sister river, River  B . We don’t want to be tied down to a motel.”

“Is there at least a campground to park the RV?”

“Well buddy, we want to be even more mobile than that, so we’ll just sleep in the bed of the truck. We’ll travel light, so don’t bring lots of extra clothes or unnecessaries.”

“Alright, alright…you’ve been talking this hatch up for six years, I guess I can rough it for a change. It better be worth it. ”

“Oh yeah, like I keep telling you, best night of fishing I’ve ever had. The  q flies were so thick I could barely breathe. Fish were sucking ‘em down like a fat man popping Tums. The hatch shut right off at dark, cold turkey. Everybody packed it up and left except me and a couple of other guys. About 10:00PM I heard a big ‘slurp’ by the far bank. Then another…”

“…and another. And you slayed another half dozen bruisers, alone, in the moonlight. Yeah, yeah, yeah…I’ve heard it before. But, my question is, How do we know when we’re supposed to go?”

“You see, I’ve got this friend, who has an informant who works at the gas station/fly shop a couple of miles from River A . He knows every nuance of that river, and people talk at the gas station. He listens. We’ll just call him, ‘Fred,’ to make things easier. Now, when my friend is informed by ‘Fred’ that the hatch has begun, we’ll leave.”

And that, my friends, is how the Kryptonite Hatch begins. How your Kryptonite Hatch ends is entirely up to you. And the flies. Especially the flies.

My Kryptonite Hatch involved Brown Drakes on Silver Creek last week. A hatch that falls toward one of the smaller windows of opportunity out there.

Our “Fred” informed my friend’s friend that the hatch started last Thursday. But the weather turned south and put them down. But they should be back again by Monday. So, with school being out and us in a position to pack and leave on a moments notice, we left Monday afternoon.

A four hour drive (including some last minute fly tying in the truck by Dan) put us at Silver Creek East, Point of Rocks parking lot just before 7:00 PM.

The parking lot was not quite full (a couple dozen vehicles). Some anglers were in the water, many were sitting or standing on the banks and quite a few were standing in the parking lot looking out over the water. Vehicles were still pulling into the lot. It was kind of weird, having so many people waiting to begin fishing slow close to dark, kind of reminded me of a few hatches on Henry’s Fork.

The drakes are “supposed” to come off a bit before dark. At least that’s the common wisdom based on years of fishing this particular hatch. Large (size 10-12) mayflies fill the air in an incredible mass of bacchanalian revelry. Fish feed at a frenetic pace. Anglers wet themselves while attempting to tie flies in the fading light and target risers.

Or not.

What we saw were miles of smooth water. No dimples. No rings. No bugs. Nada.

There were eventually some white caddis swarming the water, but rarely landing on the water (I have no idea why I failed to get a shot of the massive numbers flitting above the surface, but there were lots). There were also swarms of smaller brown caddis around bushes on the banks.

Brown drakes? A few. A couple here and there. A cluster of a dozen or so. But masses filling the sky and my nostrils? Nope.

We picked up a couple of small fish here and there. A guy a little ways down from us landed a nice 16″. I saw a very cool take from a 14″ rainbow: it leaped completely out of the water, parallel to the surface, and seemed to cover about three feet before plunging back in the water.

And I saw a common fly, Diptera, land on the back of a #16 mayfly (not brown drake). In mid-air. It seemed as if the Diptera was mounting the Ephemeroptera. Strange.

Wednesday morning I awoke early (Dan brought his pop-up tent trailer) and took a few photos.

We hit the Picabo store for breakfast and discussed the situation with the very knowledgeable Bob (the local “Fred”). We gleaned the following reports of what happened for the previous couple of days:

• Thursday, June 4, 2009 – Brown Drakes hatch in fairly decent numbers
• Friday and Saturday, June 5-6, 2009 – Weather cools, not much in the way of Brown Drakes
• Sunday, June 7, 2009, 5:00PM – sizable hatch comes off
• Monday, June 8, 2009, 10:30-11:30 AM and 3:00 PM – good hatches, the morning one was especially impressive. Large hatches of baetis, callibaetis and PMD were found on the Conservancy beats.
• Tuesday and Wednesday, June 9-10, 2009 – not much (these were the days we were there)

We did pick up a few decent fish on Wednesday and a number of smaller fish too. There were also a couple of attempts at hatches during the day, where the drakes would mass in large numbers in small sections of the river for 30 minutes or so, but just not enough to really get the fish worked up. There were a few excellent takes of naturals (watching that huge mayfly sail float downriver, then gobbled up by a decent fish was exciting).

Yes my friends, avoid the Kryptonite at all costs. Unless you have the time. Make no mistake, this Kryptonite Hatch is definitely on my “try again” list!

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