The Truth About Skwalas

It happened again last week. A well-meaning angler came into the shop and asked for a skwala emerger. This would be a knowledgeable request during a mayfly emergence.

"Skwalas are stoneflies," I told him. He understood. His expression changed a couple of times. Then we kidded a little about how the trout would don their little trout equivalents of scuba gear to go slithering up into the streamside rocks to take the emerging stoneflies.

The skwala parallela is a Golden Stonefly-sized bug that hatches in many west slope rivers during the pre-runoff period, but provides fishable numbers of bugs in only a few. Of them, the Bitterroot River in Western Montana sees this bug as an annual "super hatch." This used to be a not-so-well-kept local secret. As the word got out, over the last couple of decades, anglers from all over the state and an increasing number of visitors got in on it. "The word," as it spread, grew to contain a fair body of misinformation. There is a magazine article every couple of years. A couple of them have been fairly accurate.

Amid the hyperbole and deliberate obfuscation, anglers wander into fly shops and ask for flies that do not exist. Others expect slam-dunk fishing. No super hatch is like that, although this one, at times, comes close. Every year I try to untangle the confusion, and feel as if I'm re-inventing the wheel, or perhaps knocking the corners off the old one, and wish I could do a permanent job of it. For openers, I'd name this hatch Olive Stones, in keeping with the more prosaic and understandable Golden Stones, Salmon Flies, and other commonplace stonefly designations that are more angler-friendly. We can save the skwala designation for later.

Then I'd suggest that this hatch does not occur in a vacuum. There is a succession of stonefly hatches that leads up to it, and they occur among midges, mayflies, and a couple of caddis as well. The big Olive Stones are the frosting on the cake. One local wag insisted for years that "Them skwalas ain't green - they're gray - like this!" He would then brandish a size 12 stonefly pattern tied in the dull gray-tan colors of the smaller gray stonefly (thought to be a nemoura locally but more likely a taenionema pacifica or pallidium, if one must be technical about it) that always precedes the skwala, and gets the trout going before the skwala arrives. The hatches overlap. Often the trout will prefer one to the other. The well-armed angler will carry patterns for both.

Any #8 dark stonefly nymph will do for the nymph, which can be especially productive before the trout key on the adults. Several local variations of standard salmonfly nymphs, scaled down, and featuring a peacock herl body, are deadly when the water temps hover around 47 or 48 degrees. That tends to occur early in the Bitterroot. The Bitterroot River flows through a long, narrow, North-South trough of a valley that is scenically beautiful and offers a unique, moderate microclimate that has resulted in the nickname "Montana's banana belt." Things warm up early here in the spring. Balmy days predominate over the usual snow flurries and chill of springtime in the Rockies.

The result, for the angler, is weather that can be shirtsleeve-pleasant to fish in, but can change to a squall and wind at a moment's notice. The good fishing occurs between spurts of nasty weather. The water temperatures gradually warm up to hatch-producing levels from the departure of winter until full-blown runoff, usually from mid-March until early or mid-May. There are multitudes of hatches; many of them can be profuse.

It is not uncommon to be searching the surface with a dry #8 Olive Stone tied to 3x tippet, and find a bunch of big trout working hard on #16 Blue-winged Olive mayflies. The temptation is to cast right into them. Sometimes it works. But very often the angler who is equipped with the big stones and nothing else will wish he packed his baetis emergers and 6x as well. The Mother's Day Caddis comes on about the time the Olive Stones are all but spent - overlapping in most years. Then there are gray drakes, a few March Browns, and possibly a pre-runoff start to the "Bitterroot Stones," a local name for the #12 claassenea stones that look like baby salmon flies, and which usually hold off until mid-June.

All told, the Bitterroot offers the best pre-runoff dry fly fishing I've experienced in any non-tailwater river in the West. And while the skwala gets most of the attention, it isn't the only show in town. But it's the one that gets the trout - and the anglers - going. After a cold (and usually lean) winter, the migrating skwala nymphs move in great numbers. The trout notice that. They lie in wait, in the slow nondescript edges where the current washes the nymphs close to shore, and scarf down. Tread lightly, and carefully drift a big bug. This is not dredging.

The score one day, for guide Mike Moline and his client, was four trout ("I swear to God, Chuck, I swear to God," Mike stammered,) well over twenty-five inches broken off on the nymph, with nine trout running between sixteen and twenty inches to the net on the dry. Mike sees a lot of big fish. Four hookups on fish in the six-pound range unnerved him.

Those big fish can be unnerving to anyone. At this time of year, when the big Olive Stones are on the water, trout that would ordinarily sulk on the bottom come to the top. They aggressively crowd the juveniles off the feed lanes, and they feed aggressively. Places where a twelve incher would be welcome during mid-summer will now produce fish that run fourteen inches and above. Smaller fish scurry for cover, and are uncommon. Healthy trout to fourteen to eighteen inches are the norm, and fish over twenty inches on the dry fly are more numerous now than throughout the rest of the year.

That fact produces a frenzy among anglers that is a local form of "March madness" when they get behind the fly-tying vise. Adrenaline and enthusiasm are the precursors to fly design. Some of the results have foam egg sacs that could be used to clean whitewall tires. There are gaudy combinations of parachutes and rubber legs and bright foam and dull dubbing and elk hair and synthetic wings that cause me to wonder just how much stuff can you load on a hook.

The fly patterns that will produce early in the hatch, when the trout will grab any big dry the color of motor oil, range from the bizarre to the comical. As the pressure mounts, however, serious attempts at replicating an egg-laying olive female Olive Stone, peacock herl egg sac and golden olive abdomen tied to lay flat in the water and a sparse, fluttering wing on top, tend to produce the most consistent - and biggest - results.

This is not "cowboy" fishing. No "Yee-haw!" and slapping the bank with crude casts and stumpy leaders. The water is usually clear and cold, as the stream meanders slowly at winter low levels in its bed. Stalking, a stealthy approach, and headhunting are usually the order of the day. But when you hook up, it's usually a big trout on a #8 fly, 3x or 4x tippet, and no mercy.

Year in and year out, this hatch can be counted on to produce some superb fishing. The window of opportunity varies from year to year, and predicting a "best day" for a one-day effort can be a shaky undertaking. But for the angler who must plan a trip in advance, the odds of scoring well probably run two years out of three. The late Gary LaFontaine and I concluded one day that Big Olives on the Bitterroot is quite likely the most predictable stonefly super-hatch in the West. "With the others," he said, "like salmonflies on the Big Hole or the Madison, you'll do well to hit it one year out of four." For the angler who can escape to the water when things are right, the odds go up.

This year the river is cashing in on the dividends produced by the fires of 2000. There is plenty of nutrient in the system. There is plenty of water. There are plenty of big bugs and trout that have enjoyed an accelerated growth rate for two years to eat them. We could be looking at the best skwala - make that Olive Stone - hatch in memory.

Note: Flies tied by Chuck Stranahan, Photos by Larry Miri.

Chuck Stranahan is a nationally published writer, and a sought-after speaker at flyfishing clubs and conservation organizations. He is a regular in the Fly Tying Theater and seminar presentations at Sportsmen's Shows throughout the West. His early mentors are among the legendary names of the sport. He is respected by his professional peers as one of the most talented fly tyers of this era -- a recognition that the angling public is now coming to share.

Chuck's fly patterns are becoming standards throughout the West, and are featured in books by Randall Kaufmann, Jack Dennis, and John Holt. Visitors at Riverbend Flyfishing, his shop in Hamilton, Montana, can find Chuck producing his impeccable and durable flies and sharing tips with visiting tyers and anglers. That is, when he's not guiding and instructing them on the Bitterroot River, or off fishing mwith his young son, Matthew.

Chuck can be reached at his web site by e-mail, or at Riverbend Flyfishing, PO Box 594, Hamilton MT 59840, or by phone at (406) 363-4197.