I was in the vicinity of the upper Yakima River this weekend, but not in a good spot to try any winter fishing. So I brought my bug collecting supplies and sampled a bunch of nymphs and larvae, aiming to get some more good images to illustrate the new taxonomic keys. I was hoping to find a nice intact Skwala stonefly nymph to add to the beat-up one on the site already, a Nemouridae stonefly nymph for some proper anatomical close-ups, ditto for Capniidae or Leuctridae, and a variety of cased caddis larvae because I just don't have very many recent pictures of those with my best equipment. I met all these goals with the exception of Capniidae and Leuctridae, which will have to wait for another trip. On the way home I also stuck the net in a creek slightly closer to home and turned up some Epeorus nymphs, mostly Epeorus grandis which I didn't bother to photograph, but one from the Epeorus albertae group.

The unexpected highlight of the trip did not become apparent until after some time at the microscope. It seems I collected a several nymphs of Ephemerella mucronata, an obscure relative of the Hendrickson and Sulphur hatches, which has a holarctic distribution but has not previously been documented any closer to Washington than Montana and Alberta. However, there is a chance they belong to some other species not well-described as nymphs yet. I hope to collect more mature specimens and rear a few into adults to get a more definitive species ID.

A work trip took me to eastern Washington this fall, and I took some time to drive far out into the desert and explore a thin blue line on the map, where groundwater flowed through a channel I thought might be trouty. In one spot I wanted to try, the channel was dry, but I hunted around and found water. After a long hike over ground that looked like it should be crawling with rattlesnakes (although I fortunately didn't see any), I stepped in and started looking for trout. There were some.

Fishing mid-afternoon on a sunny day, I was pleasantly surprised to find the first fishable October Caddis (Dicosmoecus) hatch I've encountered. There weren't thick clouds of bugs, just a noticeable number of adults flitting around, enough to make trout that seemed generally lethargic rocket to the surface for anything resembling a decent imitation. One long run lined with bank-side alders, a conspicuous feature on this grassy-banked stream, held an exceptional number of caddisflies perching in the leaves, enough that at least a few would fly away when I shook the trunk of any tree. There were trout below these trees in slow, shallow water that would not ordinarily have held them. It was interesting to to see such a convincing example of trout moving between different habitats to pursue a particular food source.