Salmonflies
Pteronarcys californica
The giant Salmonflies of the Western mountains are legendary for their proclivity to elicit consistent dry-fly action and ferocious strikes.
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This wild-looking little thing completely puzzled me. At first I was thinking beetle or month larva, until I got a look at the pictures on the computer screen. I made a couple of incorrect guesses before entomologist Greg Courtney pointed me in the right direction with Psychodidae. He suggested a possible genus of Thornburghiella, but could not rule out some other members of the tribe Pericomini.
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Dragonflies
Dragonfly adults are very rarely vulnerable to trout because they are superb at flight, but their large, slow nymphs are welcome food. The adults and nymphs are both impressive predators upon other insects, and I have watched adult dragonflies kill large mayfly duns and tear through a cloud of midges at rate of several per second.
This common name refers to only one order. Click its scientific name to learn more.
Insect Order Odonata-Anisoptera
These are pretty much always called Dragonflies.
Dragonflies and damselflies are in the same order, Odonata, but they are taxonomically separated on an obscure level not built into this site, the suborder. Dragonflies are in the rarely mentioned suborder Epiprocta, and within that suborder is the infraorder Anisoptera, the scientific name by which they're best known. None of that will help you catch trout, but it explains what the hyphen in this page's name is all about.
This specimen of Libella saturata, the flame skimmer dragonfly, is the only invertebrate in this site's collection that I caught by hook and line. It swooped down and attacked my dry fly on the Firehole River, where it lived as a nymph in the hot water near the geothermal springs and geyser runoff.
See 10 more specimens...