If trout could speak, they'd call a damselfly hatch "the motherload," and wide-eyed fly fishers would mimic those fish, like religious devotees, uttering identical words.

That's because the damsel is equally enticing to trout and trout anglers: trout compare a damsel hatch to a Vegas-style smorgasbord and for stillwater anglers, the hatch provides the type of kick-butt, "one-after-the-other" fly fishing most often associated with private ponds and hatchery raceways. When the catching is good, fishing during a damsel hatch on public water is akin to a religious experience.

Damselflies are not difficult to identify and their very nature makes them conspicuous: adults have four wings and an elongated, slender body that is most commonly bright blue, although shades of olive, rust, and red are sometimes seen. Black banding or mottling on the body is quite prominent.
Adult damselflies are easily identified by their swept-back wings, and bright blue coloration. They are found in stillwaters on every continent, and rainbow trout (below) and other gamefish feed on them heavily. Click here for a list of damselfly imitations.

Through the day, adult damsels are found flying near and resting on bankside brush and any other type of landing strip, including trucks, float tubes, prams, and fishing rods. Adult damsels are sometimes mistaken as dragonflies but they are much smaller and there's this distinguishing feature: damsels fold wings over their backs at rest--similar to a caddisfly--while dragonfly wings are fixed out to the side like an airplane.

Trout feed on adult damsels when the opportunity presents itself, especially in shallow, reedy areas where insects are prone to fall off vegetation. Cast an adult pattern toward exposed vegetation and retrieve it in a twitch/long-pause fashion, or let it rest drifting in the current and wait for a cruising trout to smack it. the dry-fly fishing can be good at times but the damsel nymph is much more important to both trout and to anglers.

Trout feed on damsel nymphs year-round, but the most intense feeding occurs when the nymphs migrate toward shore to emerge. This is most pronounced between ice-out and early fall with peak activity in the early-to-mid-summer timeframe of May through July.

Damsel nymphs have an elongated, tubular-style body with a bulbous head, pronounced eyes, and three tails. Typical coloration ranges from dark green to light olive to tan or brown and often matches the surrounding aquatic vegetation. They are typically about an inch or a little longer when they are ready to emerge, best matched with #6-#10 hooks.

Damsel nymphs are slow, but steady swimmers, which make them easy prey for a trout. When emerging, damsels swim toward shore in a wiggle fashion and they do so most often in the late morning and afternoon hours. Typically, there is a two or three-hour time frame when damsels are most active and trout, for that reason, target that insect exclusively.

Damsel nymphs are ferocious predators and, during non-hatch times, they feed on scuds, chironomids, and mayfly nymphs, most often lying in ambush on submerged vegetation.

Damsel nymphs go through several instars (molts) before they mature and are ready to emerge and mate. When ready, nymphs crawl from the water onto cattails, sticks, and rocky shorelines, and break free from their nymphal shucks. After the body and wings dry--which may happen in front of your eyes if one crawls onto your floattube--damsels seek mates and copulation occurs, sometimes in the air, often while attached to bankside vegetation.

After mating, the female crawls into the water and lays eggs on vegetation. She then crawls out of the water and repeats the process. When eggs hatch, damsel nymphs are small, but fully formed, meaning they don't go through the larval and pupa stages.

To match swimming damsel nymphs, carry a variety of patterns and a selection of fly lines, including full-sinking, intermediate and floating. Use the "countdown" method to find the strike zone when fishing damsels. It's true, damsels may be found swimming to shore at any level--from the bottom of a lake to the surface--but trout will choose a level where they are most comfortable and that is where they will feed most actively. Unless you place an offering in that zone, you will likely will meet with only mediocre results.

The countdown method is straightforward. Cast your line and allow it to sink for five seconds, then start your retrieve. Repeat the process numerous times, and if you don't get any strikes, extend your count until you find the right depth. That's what a friend of mine did one day on eastern Washington's Lake Lenice during an incredible mid-June damsel emergence.

On that day we fished from float tubes with the same sinking lines, the same leader and tippets, and the same #8 flies, and he thoroughly whipped me. In fact, he hooked a big rainbow on nearly every cast until I demanded that he fish my rod.

You know what happened. I cast his rod and retrieved without a strike. He cast my rod, counted to seven as the sinking line descended, then stripped the line four times before a trout halted its progression. He noted the bend in the rod and a trout cartwheeling over the water and said, "You might want to count to seven before you start retrieving."

You don't say.

If you don't have a pontoon boat, pram or floattube, don't fret. Trout often feed on damsels in shallow, shoreline areas and wading anglers armed with a slow-sinking or floating line and a pair of quality polarized glasses should be able to catch fish in a fashion not unlike chasing bonefish on a saltwater flat.

Damselflies migrate toward the shoreline but float tubing well out in the lake can be very effective, especially around submerged weedbeds and other structure.

When wadefishing in that fashion, note the direction a fish is moving and cast your offering ahead of the trout by several yards. Allow the fly to sink to bottom. When the fish nears, quickly strip line to free the nymph from bottom vegetation, then pause. Given a split second to decide whether to eat your offering or not, a trout usually chooses to eat. I've applied this technique successfully on waters across the West and it should produce on your local lakes and reservoirs, too.

Locating a productive damselfly hatch is not difficult; damselflies are widespread throughout the Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions, along with places in the Southwest and Midwest.

Hatch timing in any given area depends on elevation and local weather. Typically, damsels become active on low-elevation lakes and reservoirs prior to their emergence in the mountains.

There are literally hundreds of excellent adult damselfly and damselfly nymph imitations on the market. In my experience, those tied with marabou, which offers the element of motion, are most effective. Click here for a list of damselly patterns from the Archive of Fly Patterns.

Before you hang up your lake fishing rod for the season, citing warming water as an excuse to spend your summer days on rivers and creeks, make sure to hit a local damsel hatch. If that water contains trout to large size, meaning fish to five pounds or more, so much the better. A damselfly is a significant meal and even the most stubborn large trout can't refuse a properly placed fly when the hatch is on. On a very good damsel day, the experience might be life-changing.

To illustrate, I once met a man who arranged his life around the damsel hatch. He tied flies during winter, then started following the western damselfly emergences in May, beginning with his home waters in Nevada. He said the hatch moves steadily north and when I met him in the Island Park country of east Idaho, he'd already pounded the fish in Nevada, Oregon, Utah and southeast Idaho.

By mid-summer he would have finished his Idaho circuit, torn up Montana's and Wyoming's best damsel waters, and would be comfortably nestled somewhere in British Columbia, focusing effort on huge Kamloops rainbows. The point is this: if the damselfly hatch can totally dominate one man's life, just think what it could do for the rest of us, just a bunch of guys who want to catch a few big fish.