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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.

Lateral view of a Clostoeca disjuncta (Limnephilidae) (Northern Caddisfly) Caddisfly Larva from the Yakima River in Washington
This one was surprisingly straightforward to identify. The lack of a sclerite at the base of the lateral hump narrows the field quite a bit, and the other options followed fairly obvious characteristics to Clostoeca, which only has one species, Clostoeca disjuncta.
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.

By Troutnut on June 27th, 2019
Having fished the previous day from our campground upstream to the park boundary, we decided on this day to work our way downstream from camp instead toward the lower end of our meadow. The day started fairly well around 10:00 am when I got an aggressive strike from a deep pool and landed a fish with its gullet packed with earthworms and cranefly larvae:




In the year before I took up flyfishing I became an increasingly avid and technically serious worm dunker (to the extent that it's possible), but as far as I know I never caught a trout that was actually stuffing itself with earthworms until now. It made perfect sense here, given the location toward the tail end of a long bend where the river was eating into the silty meadow and the bank was all soil.

The fishing for the rest of the day was pretty slow, as we only hit one or two spots with good action. However, the sunny weather with scattered dramatic clouds kept me focused on my camera as much as the water, each scene more jaw-dropping than the last:



We worked our way to the bottom of our meadow, walked back to camp for a late lunch, and went out for the evening to re-hash the upstream water we fished the previous day. It was slower this time.

Photos by Troutnut from Slough Creek in Wyoming

Slough Creek in Wyoming
Slough Creek in Wyoming
Bison across Slough Creek

From Slough Creek in Wyoming
Slough Creek in Wyoming
Slough Creek in Wyoming
Slough Creek in Wyoming
Slough Creek in Wyoming
Slough Creek in Wyoming
Slough Creek in Wyoming
Mouth full of worms. This is the first trout I ever caught that was stuffed to the brim with ordinary earthworms, thanks to living in a pool of a meadow stream with eroding soil banks. There were also some cranefly larvae in its gullet.

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