Mayfly Family Ephemeridae (Hexes and Big Drakes)

I found this lone Hexagenia atrocaudata dun fluttering by herself on the surface of a small, still stretch of river one evening as I paddled home from fishing for smallmouths in the warm August weather.

This yellow drake dun hatched out of my aquarium over a month before her brethren in the wild are slated to emerge. She seems a bit small, and that might be the reason.

This female Hex dun emerged around 11 pm, one of relatively few on the water as I rushed back to the truck to beat an approaching thunderstorm. Her tails in reality were longer than shown in the picture, but they broke off.

These photos were contributed by Spencer Vanderhoof.

These photos were contributed by Spencer Vanderhoof.

Male and female duns.

This spinner was the only member of its species I saw all night during an incredibly thick and tricky mixed hatch on Penn's Creek a few days before the real start of its famous green drake hatch.

This one hatched in the middle of July, which is very late for this species.

I found this spinner and a few of his friends bobbing above the river amidst a snowstorm hatch of white Ephoron flies.

These photos were contributed by Spencer Vanderhoof.

I found this female spinner ovipositing in a small stream. She came along while I was playing a trout -- every good bug seemed to do that last night! I didn't have my bug net, so I caught the trout in my landing net, released the trout, and caught the mayfly in my landing net. Her wing got a bit messed up from that.

I found this Hexagenia limbata spinner on a gas station in upstate New York, not a region known for heavy hatches of this species.

This medium-instar nymph is about an inch long.

This nymph is about an inch long.

Here's an unusually small early instar nymph.