Tiny Baetis mayflies are perhaps the most commonly encountered and imitated by anglers on all American trout streams due to their great abundance, widespread distribution, and trout-friendly emergence habits.
This species is very abundant in Flathead and Whitefish Lakes with a smaller population in lakes of the Swan River Drainage, and a few in Lake McDonald in Glacier Park. This species usually emerges along with Ephemera simulans.
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.
For years after I started this website, I was eagerly hoping to find a green drake to add to the collection, but I was never in the right part of the world at the right time. It finally happened on June 1st, 2007.
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.
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 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.
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.
This is the skin a brown drake dun shed when it molted into a spinner. Many of these were on the surface one afternoon, having been blown in after the flies molted on overhanging alders. They were our most noticeable sign of an intense brown drake hatch the previous night and a spinner fall to come.
Two Ephemera simulans (Brown Drake) spinners hang from tree leaves along the river. It's worthwhile to look for these in afternoons during the Brown Drake hatch, because their presence may reveal the best place to fish in the evening.
A crayfish chews on a Hexagenia limbata nymph shortly after a small Hex emergence. I didn't catch any fish, but playing around with my flashlight and camera in the rocks proved productive.
I lifted a rock in pursuit of a stonefly nymph that had scurried beneath it, and instead I found this Ephemera simulans burrowing mayfly nymph waiting to be photographed.
I am a fly fisherman but not a "purist". A friend of mine has a place on the UP of Michigan. He just called me and said a guy told him there is a way to preserve "wigglers." They use them alot up north, those that are not fly fishermen or ladies. They are fishing perch, bluegill and crappie. He heard there is a way to "blanch" them.Drop them in hot water for a few minutes and they turn rubbery. They then will keep indefinitely. Has anyone heard of this? If so, how close to correct is the procedure I mentioned??
Thanks for anyone's help.
Jason's photo of a GD shuck suggests that at hatch time the backs of the nymphs may be a greyish or grey olive color. Possibly useful information, if this is an accurate surmise.