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June 6th, 2005
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Q. I had been fishing this week on spring creeks in western Wisconsin. I observed many mayflies(?) flying off the surface. These flies were not drying on the surface; they seemed to hatch and erupt immediately into flight. What might these be? The tactic of using a nymph dropper on a parachute dry fly was incredibly successful at landing many, many brook trout. Thanks for your help. Sincerely, T. Looze
A.
I think you're asking a couple of questions:
(1) are these mayflies?, and (2) what kind of
mayflies are they?
As you probably know, mayflies have two stages
in their adult form; a sub-imago that hatches
from the final nymphal instar and the imago.
The sub-imago is sexually immature and the
duration of this stage can be as short as
a few minutes or as long 24 to 48 hours.
They do need some time to transform from
one stage to the other.
Thus, if the insects that you were observing
were literally flying off after emerging
without spending at least a few minutes
drying, then I'm guessing that they probably
weren't mayflies.
Whether they were mayflies or some other
order of insects, there's simply no way
that I could identify them without more
information and some specimens to observe.
I'm obviously hedging on a direct answer,
but that's about the best I can do with
the information you sent. Sorry.
Take care, ~ Bert
If you have a question, please feel free to contact me.
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The 'Stream Doctor' is a retired professional stream ecologist and
author, now living in the West and spending way too much time
fly-fishing. You are invited to submit questions relating to
anything stream related directly to him for use in this Q & A Feature
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