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Lateral view of a Male Baetis (Baetidae) (Blue-Winged Olive) Mayfly Dun from Mystery Creek #43 in New York
Blue-winged Olives
Baetis

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.

Case view of a Pycnopsyche guttifera (Limnephilidae) (Great Autumn Brown Sedge) Caddisfly Larva from the Yakima River in Washington
It's only barely visible in one of my pictures, but I confirmed under the microscope that this one has a prosternal horn and the antennae are mid-way between the eyes and front of the head capsule.

I'm calling this one Pycnopsyche, but it's a bit perplexing. It seems to key definitively to at least Couplet 8 of the Key to Genera of Limnephilidae Larvae. That narrows it down to three genera, and the case seems wrong for the other two. The case looks right for Pycnopsyche, and it fits one of the key characteristics: "Abdominal sternum II without chloride epithelium and abdominal segment IX with only single seta on each side of dorsal sclerite." However, the characteristic "metanotal sa1 sclerites not fused, although often contiguous" does not seem to fit well. Those sclerites sure look fused to me, although I can make out a thin groove in the touching halves in the anterior half under the microscope. Perhaps this is a regional variation.

The only species of Pycnopsyche documented in Washington state is Pycnopsyche guttifera, and the colors and markings around the head of this specimen seem to match very well a specimen of that species from Massachusetts on Bugguide. So I am placing it in that species for now.

Whatever species this is, I photographed another specimen of seemingly the same species from the same spot a couple months later.
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.
Troutnut is a project started in 2003 by salmonid ecologist Jason "Troutnut" Neuswanger to help anglers and fly tyers unabashedly embrace the entomological side of the sport. Learn more about Troutnut or support the project for an enhanced experience here.

Troutnut has attached these 8 pictures. The message is below.
From my driveway.
From my driveway.  I wish I'd taken a shorter exposure at higher sensitivity to capture more detail.  This is one in which the colors were moving around so fast that the long exposure blurred out some magnificent patterns.
From my driveway.
From my window.
From my window.
The odd-looking building in the foreground is the UAF Museum of the North.
Polar bear ice sculpture with the eclipsed moon between its front legs.
The main part of campus.
Troutnut
Troutnut's profile picture
Administrator
Bellevue, WA

Posts: 2758
Troutnut on Feb 29, 2008February 29th, 2008, 9:20 pm EST
These won't really fit in the regular site sections so I figured I'd post them here.

I just took some neat pictures of the aurora from my window and out on my driveway. Normally I can't see aurora very well from my house because I'm right in Fairbanks where there's a lot of ambient light from town, but they were really bright tonight.

Previously when I've seen the aurora, it's been pretty neat, with colorful bands arching across the sky and shifting with barely perceivable motion. Tonight it was an amazing light show, especially for about 5 minutes around midnight, with bright red and green bands rippling across most of the sky at high speed. The pictures I got really don't do them justice, because my long exposure blurred out a lot of the detail, but they're still neat.

While I'm at it, I'll include some pictures I took around campus during the lunar eclipse a couple weeks ago.
Jason Neuswanger, Ph.D.
Troutnut and salmonid ecologist
Taxon
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Site Editor
Plano, TX

Posts: 1311
Taxon on Feb 29, 2008February 29th, 2008, 9:54 pm EST
Jason-

Truly amazing photos! Thanks for sharing.
Best regards,
Roger Rohrbeck
www.FlyfishingEntomology.com
Martinlf
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Moderator
Palmyra PA

Posts: 3047
Martinlf on Mar 1, 2008March 1st, 2008, 2:41 am EST
Wow! First you make us all jealous with fish stories, then this. Do they need any English teachers up your way?
"He spread them a yard and a half. 'And every one that got away is this big.'"

--Fred Chappell
Smallstream
State College, PA

Posts: 103
Smallstream on Mar 1, 2008March 1st, 2008, 10:01 am EST
holy cow now that is cool!
JAD
JAD's profile picture
Alexandria Pa

Posts: 362
JAD on Mar 2, 2008March 2nd, 2008, 11:34 am EST


The night sky in the last picture is unreal.

Thanks
John






They fasten red (crimson red) wool around a hook, and fix onto the wool two feathers which grow under a cock’s wattles, and which in colour are like wax.
Radcliffe's Fishing from the Earliest Times,

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