Pale Morning Doves

Pale Morning Doves and brown trout. Hey I found a fishing phenom for your and surprise, surprise, this time it isn’t Josh Mills our regular correspondent. I was pointed in the direction of a 17-year-old named Zack Parker who loves to fish with his dad. They took a trip together as Zack explains. “We were on the Owyhee River in Eastern Oregon. It’s about 50 miles from Boise on the Oregon Idaho border. It is really popular. It is a brown trout river mainly. There are a few rainbows but it is brown trout heavy, that is pretty much the main catch. I asked Zach what he was using for the browns. PMD’s, it’s a Pale Morning Dove, an insect that during June and July mainly, hatch frequently. That is what the fish start feeding on, they just come off. In the late afternoon, maybe around five, the PMD’s start hatching and they fall off into the water and the fish feed on them throughout the evening. They feed on them overnight and then the bugs die off and the next morning, there are a lot of dead PMD’s that are still floating on the river and the fish still feed on them. That is why the dry fly fishing can be good at night and into the following morning because they’re still feeding on the dead ones. That’s not every night, just some nights, when the hatch is really good. We were lucky that we were there when the PMD hatch was very good, so we got into them.