The Caenis is a small white fly that hatches in huge numbers on most lakes and rivers accross the UK and Ireland. It is known as the curse because their as so many of them and they are so tiny that it can be nearly imposible to imitate them among the soup of fly that falls on the water. Trout will often not even look at what they are taking and just inhale mouthful after mouthful and filter out the tiny flies. This tends to happen mostly comming up to dusk and continues on through the night and into early morning. You can have fish feeding inches from you fly and not taking your imitation. But before you go home frustraited here are some tips that might help you
Presentation - Particularly in smaller waters that get fished quite a bit you could be fooled into spending your time casting to every rising fish, this can actually be a problem as educated fish know to avoid the fly that has just been cast to them as they recognise the splash. To avoide this I recomend casting in an area trout are feeding an let the fly sit and settle. It can take a few minutes for the fish to come around again but this time they will hopefully come accrss the fly sitting naturally and are more likely to give it a go. Fine tepered leaders are also recomended to help turn over the fly and keep the leader streight. Degrese the leader so it sinks and won't creat an impression on the top of the water.
Match the Hatch Or Don't!!!!
The Caenis is a small white fly its body can apear green at times or even a soft pink colour other times it can apear white with a darker almost black spot or brownish. The smaller you can go the better and I have added some pictures of some flies suitable for this. The other option that alot of people miss is to capitaise on the fact that the fish are looking up and offer somthing completly different as it is impossible to truly match the canis. Trout are opertunists and somtimes a handy snack will attact some of the fish. I tend to go for dry sedge patterns right up into large size 8 or 6 murroughs or a royal wulff can do the trick. Other options are floating fry patterns as trout like to eat smaller fry and will often snap the floating fry up. On the river big Lough you may be better using your sedges and bussy dry patterns. Another option is to pull a muddler or sub surface wet through the feeding fish and see if they are in the mood for a chase.
A Completly over the top Murrough pattern to try induce a take.
Some small imitations for the Caenis
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