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3. Some wildflower photos for Spence

As a genuine botanist (B.S., University of Michigan, 1986), I thought I would share a few of my latest wildflower photos - our summer crop is well underway. I had thought of just sending them to Spence but I figured a few others on here might appreciate them, especially Jason who is informed enough (botany classes or just personal interest?) to include scientific names with his. Enjoy!

Jonathon

P.S. My camera is just a basic little Nikon Coolpix L14. It is tricky to get the focus right - sometimes the autofocuser gets it wrong and I get a brightly colored blob against a background of nicely focused grass...

OK, I'll add an insect.

Check this out:



This is a moth that has obviously evolved with Red-Eyed Susan's. Appears it's avoiding birds -something with color vision. Cool huh?

Jason, if Jonathan ties an attractor fly to match it, would that meet basic criteria for this site? :)

Great stuff, Jonathon. It would be cool if you could put photos to the words in Schwiebert's writings describing all the flora (aquatic and otherwise) that are so often mentioned. I bet Taxon or Spence could help put together a list? Though knowing Taxon, he may already have or know of one. Of course he wrote so much he probably mentioned every waterweed, riparian plant and forest tree there is... Never mind.

Kurt

First off...Nice photos there Jonathon...No doubt it's summer up your way.

Paul I don't know what to say?! No way around it, even if it's technically "matching the hatch", it would still be a gaudy fly. How about us calling it the Szechwan Pheasant Tail Nymph or SPTN?

I know its a reach...;)

Spence

Ok Paul, let's see...I'm guessing a reddish underbody - mix up some brown & pink dubbing (no doubt some of you could come up with some exotic material like ram testicle wool or worse)...grizzly dyed pink tied palmer-style for the hackle...mottled turkey lightly bleached and then dyed pinkish-red for the wings, tied tent-style like a caddis...yellow-buff dyed deer hair spun and trimmed into a little ball for the head. How am I doin', boys?

Jonathon

Hey, forget about the trout fly. What do you think of that cool camouflage?? Blew me away when I saw it.

Yes it is beautiful. OK Roger - what is it?

Sorry, Kurt, you'll have to settle for me in Roger's absence.

I believe this is Schinia masoni. It is one of the Flower Moths in the family Noctuidae. This one is known as the Blanket Flower Moth, but I have also seen it called the Gaillardia Moth. The larvae feed on Gaillardia aristata, the Red-Eyed Susan. But I'm neither a lepidopterist nor a botanist, so I could be wrong.

My guess would be a moth of the family Noctuidae. And yes, that is superb camouflage - the same kind that crab spiders use so that moth had better be careful!

Jonathon

Schinia it is. Thanks guys. I'll share that with my son who found it with me. We were roving with archery gear and he picked that red-eye as the next target; Glad we missed! Lotsa images on Google. Thanks!

Nice work, Lloyd. For the record, Roger was not absent. Rather, he wasn't able to identify the moth, so didn't have anything useful to report. :-)

Great Photos Amigo !!!

I saw a book one time that listed hatches that correlated with the blooming of certain wild flowers. Anybody ever see it? I've looked for a copy for several years now and can't find one.

I believe it was The Phenological Fly... something like that... a safe bet is lilacs and sulphurs in Northern Michigan....

That's it Tim...'The Phenological Fly' by Bob Scammel...I just googled it...I have to do something other than just sit here watching the market tank, eh!

When I'm usually driving up in late May the Serviceberry (Amelanchier) are usually blooming in the median of the expressway. The one I have growing next to the house is a week or two ahead of its up north cousins...I expect to see the Light Henny for sure when I get to the river.

Spence

I think JR is getting close to finishing his book....

Tim,

This is interesting news. Maybe you could give me some details in a PM...I saw him a few times this spring and even had dinner with him earlier in the year and he didn't say a word...I'm going to make him pop for dinner next time! ;)

He has spent a lifetime really collecting his stories and pumping out flies...A good editor and a wonderful photographer and he's all set. If he gets it all down it would be great. You know I'm biased but the old Au Sable needs to take its place in the sun.

Thanks for letting me know.

Spence

Nothing wrong with being a little biased. I know quite a few who became truly acquainted with fly-fishing on the AuSable. I don't think there's a better river for several states around to really learn about hatches and the trout's reaction to them.

Tim,

It has sure been good to me over the years. It has been my Harvard and when I took all the things I'd learned there out west I realized, to my surprise, that I hadn't been sleeping in class...;)

Of course I had some pretty patient professors...Really patient!

I studied the classics...I had you and JR as my instructors for these classes...Borchers 101, Robert's Drake advanced training, the wonderful Harris Special. As an elective, just for fun, I tossed Mr. Madsen's Skunk around as an experiment...I purchased my tools, in the earlier years, from a wonderful old sliding glass wooden case on the counter at Caid's in Lovell's...Like a kid in the candy shop!

I did ok I guess. There was a period where I was a deconstuctionist and tore these flies apart trying to get at the truth of how they were made...And I have watched JR do that "trick" with the hen hackle wings on his Brown Drake a thousand times and I still think its slight-of-hand...A magic trick. He has even gone painfully slow trying to get the dim light in this old brain to finally light up...

Just for fun last year at the show up in Holt JR tied for me, at my request, a "Riser's Special"...No one watching had ever heard of it and I was thrilled when he tossed it over to me to keep and said, "There it is...I haven't tied one of those in years!"...My buddy Bill had asked me to run it by JR I think as a test...He had remembered it as a kid probably from that old shop over in Roscommon...The one with the Solunar Table device out front...I never remember seeing it but have joked that it probably said, "Boys! If you are standing right here, right now, reading this crazy chart you are missing out because they are rising in the creek! I wrote this earlier this morning just before I grabbed the rod and headed to the river."

It would be nice to see the contents and memories from JR's old crusty brain finally down on paper! Well...Maybe not all of it, eh!? ;) It was a hoot a few years back at the Rod Show in the spring to finally witness him getting his presentation on a computer format...I think those attending felt that the world might come to an end pretty damn soon. A man who has shunned a conventional bobin when he ties has finally "plugged in"!

For those unforunates who are still following along with this ramble...JR is Jerry Regan and along with Tim Neal here are the "old guard" (sorry there Tim) and preservers of the traditional Au Sable fly tying tradition...All the famous places from the Catskills to the Lehigh Valley have had their famous "keepers of the flame"...The Au Sable area has a wonderful tradition as well.

Jerry likes to say that the real deal behind the tradition was economics...They tied with materials that were abundant around the Grayling area...Deer hair being pretty close to the top of the ingredients list...Beaver, muskrat, turkey, etc...

Jerry was the local barber and Grayling's not downtown Detroit so he had to do something with his time...;) He's going to box my ears for me the next time he sees me so I better behave!

Nice talking with you Tim! When we going to do lunch???

Spence

You can tell I'm a little calmer today...The market must of opened up on the positive side this morning...