Hot Creek Trico Guide: Timing the Morning Hatch

Hot Creek in trico season is one of the hardest and most rewarding pieces of water in the Eastern Sierra. It is a spring creek, so the flows are low and steady, the weed beds are thick, and the fish have seen everything. The good news is that the hatch runs to a schedule you can set your watch by, and if you show up rigged and ready you can have the best two hours of your season before most people have finished their coffee.

The timetable

Tricos run from roughly mid summer into September and the morning follows a pattern. Expect sporadic midge activity from about seven to ten. The female tricos start hatching around seven. The spinner fall, which is the part that matters, lands somewhere near nine. And it is usually over between ten and eleven as the water warms and the fish drop off. Caddis overlap through the same window, which is why you need to be able to tell them apart.

Be at the water and rigged before the spinner fall starts, not during it. The single most common mistake we hear about is arriving at nine and spending the best twenty minutes tying on tippet.

Read the rise, then choose the fly

This is the tell that saves you an hour of guessing. A splashy rise is almost always a caddis, because caddis come off fast and the trout has to hurry. A quiet sipping rise, where you see little more than a dimple and a nose, is a trout eating tricos. Mayfly spinners lie flat and helpless in the film, so the fish has all the time in the world and takes them gently.

Watch a fish for three or four rises before you cast at it. Splashy means put on a caddis. Sippy means go small and go trico.

The flies

Tricos are small, so this is size 20 to 22 water and there is no way around it. Carry a Sparkle Dun Male Trico for the hatch itself and a Trico Male Poly Spinner for the spinner fall, which is the one that will catch you the most fish. For the overlapping caddis, a Spent Partridge Caddis in 16 to 20 covers it, and an Elk Hair Caddis in brown is the more visible option when the light is bad.

When nothing is showing, and there will be mornings like that, go subsurface or go terrestrial. A Bead Body Scud in olive matches the shrimp these fish eat every day of the year, and a CDC Ant will pull a fish up out of nowhere on a warm morning. A TG BH Zebra Midge in black under a dry is the safe searching rig.

Fishing it without spooking everything

Two things matter more than fly choice here. The first is where you look. If you are staring at the weed beds you will put your fly in them, so look at the clear lanes between the weeds and cast at those instead. The second is drift length. Keep them short, around four seconds, then pick up with a smooth but firm backcast over your downstream shoulder. Long drifts drag, and drag on this creek means the fish is gone for the morning.

Fish a long leader, nine to twelve feet, and add three to six feet of fine tippet. And set faster than feels natural. By late season these trout are very good at eating a fly and spitting it before you have registered the take.

A note on the water itself

Hot Creek runs low and warms quickly through the day, which is the real reason the morning is the whole game in summer. It is barbless, catch and release, fly fishing only. Carry a thermometer, and when the water climbs toward 70 degrees, go and do something else. The Interpretive Site takes heavy pressure, so if you want water to yourself, an evening session can be the smarter play.

The short version

Be rigged before seven. Watch the rise form before you choose a fly. Splashy is caddis, sippy is trico. Fish size 20 to 22 on fine tippet, aim at the clear lanes, keep the drift short, and set quickly. Be off the water by eleven.

Every fly above is one we tie ourselves, and each ships with a tutorial for the water it is made for. You can shop all our Hot Creek flies here. If you are new to the creek and want a short list rather than a long one, email us at sales@395flyco.com and we will tell you what we would actually carry.