never seen a nymph until today. looked down from fishing to see this thing floating by! after getting home and looking it up it looks like a stonefly nymph to me? what ya guys think?
Looks like an early black (or brown) stone fly that is in the process of emerging into a winged adult.
it was on the top of the water. unless it was on some ice on the side of the stream and I broke it and it fell in?
Early stonefly nymph…maybe Taeniopteryx sp.
Most stone flies crawl to the edge of the water and emerge into the winged adult out of the water. I have though seen many early black stone flies emerging mid stream on my old home stream back in Pa. What is often thought to be a “hatch” of early black stones is in fact the females flying out of streamside vegatation and returning to the water to lay thier eggs.
thanks guys. I need to keep my eyes open for more.
early black or early brown but that def is a stonefly the wingpads are the easiest way to tell.
yupp stonfly for sure, seen a hatch today, but i didnt have waders on i was just out for a walk, damn thing flew right up on my ear and scared the heck out me 10 mintues later when he decided to catch a ride an appear on my cheek
1st time I ever saw any nymph ever. pretty sweet to kno they are in the river I fish!
we have lots of silt and I always heard thats not good for bugs that live in the streams.
The skwala stoneflies are just starting out here on the Yakima river
(washington state) The males have wings but the never develope only
the females.
Flyfisher121
We have early stones in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Wouldn’t be surprising if you have them too.
Silt doesn’t mean no bugs, just different bugs. Look for burrowers to emerge such as the Hex.
Silt isn’t the problem with our rivers, it’s the years of using them as a means of disposal for a plethora of bad things.
It is an Early Black Stone fly nymph. They usually walk out of the stream along the bottom to molt into flying adults on land. After mating, the females return to the water surface as fluttering ovipositors.
The nymphs on top of the water get swept back into the stream as they reach the bank to crawl out.
This is a fun bug to fly fish with in late winter and early spring on Northeast and upper Midwest streams that have this bug. Peope refer to fishing the Early Black Stone "Hatch are actually dry fishing when egg laying adult females return to the water surface to deposit their eggs.
we get a huge hex hatch being right on lake erie. they even cover my house! also midges are abundant and cover the house too. never seen a stone or caddis adult but maybe I don’t know what I am looking for?
There are two articles on ‘Stones’ here, which you probably didn’t see!
They are located under the menus ’ FlyFishing Basics/Entomology’.
When nothing seems to work… fish stonefly nymphs !