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3. Eastern Green Drake Variations?, Page 2

trying to see if one darkens or the other lightens is an excellent place to start, and I'll be anxious to hear the results; but i'm still interested to see if we could get dna out of them, and if so, what it says. thanks for trying!

well holy cats i actually found those old photos, both male and female. i would say these were taken between 16-24 hours after i caught them on the stream. you can see the tails are elongated and the abdomen is still light on top. they were taken in 2001 and you can see the insects are on a sheet of foam rather than streamside stuff.

i also had two people tell me they saw almost no duns tonight but tons of spinners which also never fell. the hatch is likely waning and hopefully myself or someone else from the area can snag a dun or two before it's all over.

Hey guys,

I love this thread, and can't seem to keep my oar out of the water, even at risk of catching a crab. I believe your latest two photos to be of an Ephemera guttulata male and female spinner, rather than being duns.

Roger- on this i am certain, those two pics are of duns. the next day both bugs were 3/4 dead and trapped in their molted dun shucks. i remember that clearly but i did not photograph the dead spinners.

this pic of a female spinner shows how much darker and more contrasted their color becomes and the wing loses the vast majority of it's green color. you can also see the abdomen right through the hind wing. i do use flash in my photos and it does tend to reflect off the wings, making them look shinier.

Wow, Nick, I'm sold. I've seen lots of variation in Green Drakes in the past--creamy ones, yellowish ones, grayish ones, and greenish ones--but light-backed and dark-backed duns hatching at the same time is completely new to me. I can see why Roger thought the ones in the new photos might be spinners, but the forelegs of the male are clearly those of a dun. Although I thought my more prosaic explanation might prevail, this is not just a matter of darkening. Now, I'm truly intrigued.

Please redouble your efforts to get some of these to Konchu. Thank you for sharing the photos of this very interesting and unusual population.

Lloyd and everyone thank you so much for the help with this puzzling situation. hopefully with Konchu's help we can find out for sure what they are. i will post on my site to see if someone can get us a dun to test since i'm tied up this weekend and likely won't be able to get down there till early next week.

there is another guy from my area on here, DOS. if you can help out with this little experiment i would greatly appreciate it. i think you know what stream they are from if not PM me.

Guys, if you haven't looked at Nick's page take the time to pull it up. Some amazing photos and great fly recipes.