Salmonflies
Pteronarcys californica
The giant Salmonflies of the Western mountains are legendary for their proclivity to elicit consistent dry-fly action and ferocious strikes.
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Nymphs of this species were fairly common in late-winter kick net samples from the upper Yakima River. Although I could not find a key to species of Zapada nymphs, a revision of the Nemouridae family by Baumann (1975) includes the following helpful sentence: "2 cervical gills on each side of midline, 1 arising inside and 1 outside of lateral cervical sclerites, usually single and elongate, sometimes constricted but with 3 or 4 branches arising beyond gill base in Zapada cinctipes." This specimen clearly has the branches and is within the range of that species.
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Wbranch on Dec 26, 2010December 26th, 2010, 11:56 pm EST
Hello Spence,
""Spence. Have you ever noticed just how much we are just waiting around?!"
I agree that often one has to wait for bugs to emerge before we can ply our dry fly offerings. But I'm okay with waiting for the bugs to emerge and start to see the rythmic rise forms of the trout.
My initial forays into fly fishing were mostly nymph based. I nymphed my butt off for at least thirty years. I was high sticking before it even had a name and many times could just sense a trout had eaten the nymph and I'd lift and feel the throbbing of the rod.
There was no time where I suddenly said "I'm done with nymphs" but more of a gradual cessation of looking for good nymph runs and one of looking for rise forms. I think much of my change from nymphing to dries ocurred when I stopped fishing the Beaverkill and Willowemoc where the numbers of trout are quite high per mile. I felt much more confident while nymphing those rivers that there were good numbers of trout in the riffles that would see my nymph.
The rivers I prefer to fish now appear to have far fewer trout per mile (excluding Montana) and I prefer to sit on the bank, or wait in my drift boat, for the rises to start. I still will nymph hard for steelhead and I still enjoy tying lots of nymphs. I also often hang a nymph off the bend of my dry fly on a piece of tippet 6" - 10" long.
""Spence. Have you ever noticed just how much we are just waiting around?!"
I agree that often one has to wait for bugs to emerge before we can ply our dry fly offerings. But I'm okay with waiting for the bugs to emerge and start to see the rythmic rise forms of the trout.
My initial forays into fly fishing were mostly nymph based. I nymphed my butt off for at least thirty years. I was high sticking before it even had a name and many times could just sense a trout had eaten the nymph and I'd lift and feel the throbbing of the rod.
There was no time where I suddenly said "I'm done with nymphs" but more of a gradual cessation of looking for good nymph runs and one of looking for rise forms. I think much of my change from nymphing to dries ocurred when I stopped fishing the Beaverkill and Willowemoc where the numbers of trout are quite high per mile. I felt much more confident while nymphing those rivers that there were good numbers of trout in the riffles that would see my nymph.
The rivers I prefer to fish now appear to have far fewer trout per mile (excluding Montana) and I prefer to sit on the bank, or wait in my drift boat, for the rises to start. I still will nymph hard for steelhead and I still enjoy tying lots of nymphs. I also often hang a nymph off the bend of my dry fly on a piece of tippet 6" - 10" long.
Catskill fly fisher for fifty-five years.
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