Lateral view of a Female Hexagenia limbata (Ephemeridae) (Hex) Mayfly Dun from the Namekagon River in Wisconsin

Hex Mayflies
Hexagenia limbata

The famous nocturnal Hex hatch of the Midwest (and a few other lucky locations) stirs to the surface mythically large brown trout that only touch streamers for the rest of the year.

A small spring creek in Wisconsin. A little brook trout stream tumbles over boulders

Stream photos

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Perlodidae (Springflies and Yellow Stones) Stonefly Nymph Perlodidae (Springflies and Yellow Stones) Stonefly Nymph

Artistic view of a Perlodidae (Springflies and Yellow Stones) Stonefly Nymph from the Yakima River in Washington

This one seems to lead to Couplet 35 of the Key to Genera of Perlodidae Nymphs and the genus Isoperla, but I'm skeptical that's correct based on the general look. I need to get it under the microscope to review several choices in the key, and it'll probably end up a different Perlodidae.

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27" brown trout, my largest ever. It was the sub-dominant fish in its pool. After this, I hooked the bigger one, but I couldn't land it.

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Ephemerella subvaria (Hendrickson) Mayfly Nymph Pictures

This is one of the nymphs I collected doing something very, very strange on March 17th 2004. In the middle of the day, around 2 pm, in the water right around my feet I watched lots of Ephemerella nymphs clumsily swimming up all the way to the surface and then just kind of drifting and wiggling around in the water column. None hatched. They seemed to do it more intensely when the sun was out. It wasn't the time of day for the normal invertebrate drift phenomenon, and as far as I know invertebrate drift doesn't involve this kind of clear effort to swim all the way to the surface. I didn't need a net to catch them, I just reached down into the water and grabbed them with my fingers just below the surface.

The prominent abdominal tubercles aren't quite black, though, and the general color is a dark brown, though I saw nymphs with all Hendrickson color stages behaving strangely.