Juju Emerger 12/13/2015 Photo Album
I tied ten juju emergers last spring, and I tested them on several occasions during the early summer time frame when pale morning duns were active. I can report some success, but I also lost quite a few and reduced my supply to three. I suspect that my short supply affected my willingness to knot a juju emerger to my line, as I gravitated to the salvation nymph in many situations where a juju emerger might have been effective.
Juju Emerger
Since I had the requisite materials on hand, I decided to create twelve new flies to bring my total to fifteen. I completed this task several weeks ago, and I am anxious to utilize them for longer intervals during 2016. Charlie Craven’s recipe specifies size 18 hooks, so I complied with these directions and made eight. Once these were completed I clamped some size 16 hooks in my vice and produced four larger imitations.
Super Macro
On Friday December 11 Jane and I stopped at Charlie’s Fly Box in Old Arvada on our way to Golden. The main salesperson was busy with another customer, and Charlie Craven asked if he could help me. Rarely do I get an opportunity to speak with the owner of the shop and one of my favorite fly designers. Charlie helped me find the two packets of hooks that I was seeking, and then I took the opportunity to ask him about the juju emerger. I was surprised to learn that the pattern that I copied from his instructions is actually intended to be a blue winged olive imitation. The two strands of olive and one strand of brown super hair create an olive body with a segmented appearance similar to a baetis nymph. I now wonder if I should create some size 20’s and 22’s for the smaller broods of blue winged olives that emerge late in the season.
A Size 16 Juju Emerger
Surprisingly Charlie told me I should use two brown and one black strand of super hair to mimic a pale morning dun emerger or alternatively two brown and one orange. Now that I learned this from the designer, I may produce some additional variants to imitate pale morning duns. I understand why I unknowingly selected the salvation nymph during pale morning dun hatches instead of the juju emergers…my juju emergers were designed for a different mayfly hatch!