Strategies for More Success with the Trico Spinner Fall

By Joe Dellaria

Most of the big hatches are done by early June in Wisconsin where I fish and it’s 4-6 weeks before the hopper/beetle bite really takes off. The Trico spinner fall helps fill that gap as it usually starts right around the 4 ^th of July. If you are new to fishing the Trico spinner fall, you may want to read the original post entitled, “The ABCS of the Trico Spinner Fall” it provides the basics for what happens and what you need to do. This post is aimed at those who have mastered the basics and are looking to up their game in this technically challenging style of fishing.

The fish love this spinner fall as the flies are dead and float in the surface film for a long time. It is like shooting fish in a barrel for trout to eat them. Sometimes the water can be covered with spinners and the fish will literally mow a strip of flies by swimming with their mouth open! I have only seen that a couple of times. 

The male Tricos hatch at night and the females start hatching in the morning. When the air temperature reaches around 65 °F the males and females mate in the air. In a good year, the mating balls can be 2-3 yards in diameter (sometimes bigger) and you can barely see through them. Other years the mating balls can be 2-3 feet in diameter and fairly sparse. This year I have barely seen a mating ball but the spinner fall still happens. 

After mating, the males die first and fall unto the water. Depending on how thick the mating balls are, the spent males can be on the water from around a half hour to nearly an hour. Towards the end of the male fall, the spent females begin falling on the water after dropping their eggs into the water. Both males (black body and abdomen) and females (white body and black abdomen) can be on the water for a significant time. 

Sometimes the fish don’t have a significant preference for male or female flies. This year they are paying attention and once the females start dropping, they have been switching to females mostly or only. You will know when this happens as you will be getting regular takes on your male pattern and all of a sudden, the fish will not touch the fly. It’s very frustrating seeing dozens of rising fish ignoring your fly until you remember, “Oh, they have switched to females.” This is easily confirmed by grabbing a spinner off the water surface to see it is a female. Tie on a female Trico and you will be back in business.

Two Fly Rigs Are the Best:

I can get away with #18 or #20 flies for most of the season. Tricos are around a #22-24 hook size. All of these are difficult to find on the water if you are casting more than 15-20 feet. I use a hi-vis parachute fly as my lead fly with a 15-18” dropper to the Trico. You will want lead flies with white, yellow, orange, and red posts. White and yellow show best in the shade while orange and red posts show best in the sun and when there are a lot of bubbles on the surface. Colored hi-vis posts are often needed as white posts are hard to spot if there are a lot of bubbles or foam where you are fishing. If you don’t want to carry that many flies, an orange post works reasonably well in the shade and is great in the sun.

Tippet Size:

It is entirely possible you will run into an upper-teens and even 20’s fish when fishing the Trico spinner fall. For that reason, I start with 4X tippet to the lead fly and use 5X for the Trico dropper. If I know I have the right sized Trico and I get consistent refusals, I drop to a 6X dropper to the Trico. If there is any wind at all, even a 5X dropper will be difficult to place accurately and it will nearly be impossible to accurately deliver the fly on a 6X dropper. There have been occasions where I have had to drop to 7X to get takes. I always start with a 5X dropper and keep going down in tippet size until I get takes. Due to the small dropper tippet sizes, it pays to occasionally check the dropper tippet for nicks or wear spots. If you find any, replace the whole dropper tippet. Remember, tippets only break on the biggest fish you have seen that day (and when it is your last fly stuck in a tree)!

If you tie your own flies using large gape hooks such as, Daiichi 1110 Wide Gape Dry Fly Hook, improves your chances of hooking more fish with your favorite Trico pattern. I have also been experimenting with Klinkhammer style hooks (317 BL Nymph Emerger Hook-medium wire; 1160 Klinkhamer Hook-fine wire). The results have been mixed where it seemed like I missed a lot of takes in one outing but I caught the 17-inch brown on a Klinkhammer hook. It’s probably worth trying them as these have an even larger gape. I also use #18 size hooks but tie a #20 size fly. This gives me a little more hook strength and gape. One thing to be aware of is that while thin wire hooks do improve fly flotation, they can bend enough to lose a bigger fish if you have to turn the fish to keep it out of snags and other debris. Be sure to check your hook if a fish gets off. 

Strategy Counts:

The following tips are strategic in nature. I have learned these after fishing the Trico spinner fall for over 20 years. Hopefully you will find these useful in increasing both the size and number of fish you catch while fishing this technically challenging style of fly fishing.

Shady Trumps Sunny:

The fish are feeding at the surface and often will hold just a few inches below the surface. They are easy pickings for various birds of prey. When you see lots of heads rising in a sunny stretch, most of the time you have 1-3 casts before a large portion of fish stop rising; I refer to that as going down for short. Surprisingly, most often they will not start rising again. If the spinner fall is particularly thick and it is in the first 1-2 weeks of the spinner fall, they may start rising again. As the Trico season progresses, the fish will become increasingly wary and even one cast may be enough to put down an entire pod of rising fish rising in the full sun. 

It is preferable to find a stretch of water that remains in the shade during the spinner fall. The fish will usually be much more aggressive and less skittish in comparison to a run in full sunshine. Hopefully you know the river you will be fishing and you can pick areas that remain in the shade. This gets more challenging as the nighttime lows start getting lower which means the air temperature reaches 65 °F later in the morning and it becomes increasingly difficult to find water that will be in the shade. You can work ahead by paying attention to which areas of the river are shady in the late morning as you fish towards the end of June.

Cloudy days help both sunny and shady parts of the river when you get the right type of clouds. Recently, I realized there are dark clouds and light clouds. When you have low and light grey clouds, the entire river lights up like there is a search light shining on it. When you run into this situation, even shady runs may be difficult. In contrast, if you get those dark clouds, it is easier in normally sunny runs and shady runs improve even more.

Current Lines Become Very Important:

During the spinner fall, current lines are the conveyer belts delivering an endless smorgasbord of these diminutive spinners. Hence, the biggest fish gets the prime spot in the current line. It pays to exercise a little self-control and watch the current line to determine if you can tell where the largest fish is feeding. Sometimes all the fish are roughly the same size and this is not important. However, when you spot a large fish, it is best to focus on casting to that fish first. Otherwise, you may spook the bigger fish as you pull a smaller fish past that fish. Every so often, you make the right cast and a little fish gets your fly before it gets to your target fish. That’s the end of the bigger fish until tomorrow! I hate when that happens.

Competition Is Your Ally:

Once the spinner fall gets to its peak, it is not unusual to see 20 or more heads rising. As you fish the spinner fall more, you will begin to recognize when fish are competing. Telltale signs are side-by-side fish slashing at flies. When you see this, all you have to do is get your flies close to either fish and hold on, the takes can be ferocious. Two weeks ago, I got broken off by an upper teens fish after the hookset. By the time I tied on a new dropper and Trico, the fish were back at it and two casts later I hooked and landed a 17-inch beauty which was smaller than the one that broke me off! Even after that ruckus I managed to get two more 13-inchers and one 14-inch fish out of an area no bigger than a large kitchen sink. It doesn’t get much better than that! The 17-inch fish had the fly nearly down to his gullet. It took quite a while to get the fly out. The fish was exhausted and spent 4-5 minutes right next to me reviving so I was able to use my waterproof camera to get a nice picture of him reviving!

Overhead Cover and a Current Line Are the Best:

That 17-inch brown above was competing with other fish under an overhanging tree and in a current line. The competition and faster current forced the fish to take the fly ferociously. The fish lose their composure and go wild in these situations. When I set the hook on this fish, he ran about 2 yards and launched out of the water like a torpedo, ran another 4-5 feet and leapt a second time. My heart was in my throat for fear the hook would come out. As I said above, the fly was nearly in the fish’s gullet, the only way he was coming off would be by breaking me off. It pays to keep looking for new runs where the fish are feeding on Tricos instead of going back to the same spot.

Quiet Sippers Are Almost Always bigger:

It is easy to focus on a pod of fish thrashing the surface as they compete for a Trico. However, it always pays to watch the water as you work up the river. Anytime you see a lone fish that just barely dimples the surface as it takes a Trico it is nearly assured it is a nice fish. Usually, you get no more than 2-3 casts at fish like this before they go down. It is important to figure out the best place to stand to get a drag-free drift. If you get the right drift, the hardest part is waiting for the fish to finish the take. I try to remind myself to hold back on the hookset until the fish turns. A gentle wrist snap is all that is needed after the fish has turned. 

Different Hooksets for Slow and Fast Water:

I was able to set the hook immediately on the 17-inch fish that was under a tree and in a fast current line because the take was fast and ferocious. If you are fishing a riffle with decent current, you can set the hook as soon as you see the take as the fish move fast and usually hammer the fly. You have to remind yourself to slow down the hookset when you move to slower water as the fish often casually sip the fly as the water is slow and there is no competition. If you use a fast water hookset you will “pull defeat out of the jaws of victory.” Trust me, I have done that more than I care to admit.

Hopefully these points will help you get more and bigger fish the next time you fish the Trico spinner fall.