© Grace Rose Photography
Whether we’re slapping the water with Stoneflies, banging foam hoppers, or our obsession born out of matching the numerous mayfly hatches with quill bodied dries and sparsely tied emergers is the goal, insects are the very foundation on which our angling pursuit for trout is built.
They are the orders and families, genera and species that keep us awake late into the night bent over our vise, spinning thread and materials onto hooks in elaborate fashion. They leave us scratching our heads on the banks of rivers and streams when fish selectively swirl
to the surface, and every cast and subsequent drift past undisturbed. Insects haunt the trout addict’s dreams long after the rods and reels are stowed away, and the day’s failure or success demand for more answers. Their emergence and the lore that surround fabled hatches, bring us back casting to hungry trout each and every season, hoping against all odds for that one 20-plus-incher.
In this sport, hobby, art form, obsession or addiction, whichever way you come to call fly fishing, our first introduction into the community is often under the guiding words “match the hatch.” With countless
color photos filling page after page in books and magazines, detailing to great extent the minute attention one must pay to the lifecycles of insects in order to successfully catch trout with flies, there arises but one slight flaw.
As beginners we tend to get trapped in this frame of mind that at certain times of the year, only those insects clearly marked and labeled on a hatch chart or page offer any opportunity for catching trout. It truly is a rare moment, while standing in the midst of one of nature’s prolific mayfly hatches, to come upon another angler subjectively casting insects outside the comfort hatch zone. I stand guilty of giving certain insects a brief shagging nod—especially during past winters, when in my one-track mind I was convinced that trout spent their winters selectively targeting micro midges and Blue Winged Olives on cloudy days—and since have retracted these self-damaging thoughts.
Stoneflies
Plecoptera, commonly referred to as Stoneflies, form substantial sources of year-round fare for trout. With some minor exceptions in the order of mayflies, stoneflies are the consistent buffet-filled-trough of the aquatic insect world. Fond clingers and scramblers of cobble substrate and gravel basins of fast flowing, oxygen-rich sections of rivers and streams, the stonefly’s territories stretch from the far northern reaches of Canada and Alaska to the cold mountain waters of the southern states, and well past the Rockies to the crystalline waters on the western coast.
Their order harbors robust numbers and staggering variations of genera and species, with prolific emergence activity starting early in the year with the families Capniidae (Snowflies), Nemouridae (Forestflies) and Leuctridae (Needleflies), and the larger western families of Perlodidae (Springflies) and Taeniopterygidae (Willow flies) following closely in early spring. Warmer days of middle to late spring bring about the legendary western hatches of Pteronarcys californica (Salmonflies), along with the largest eastern specimen Pteronarcys dorsata (Giant Black Stonefly) and the more common and widely dispersed hatches of the lighter colored family Perlidae (Golden Stones) filling in the gaps.
At the start of summer anglers witness the final major stonefly emergence with the yellowish-olive specimens of the genus Isoperia (Stripetail) member of the Perlodidae family, commonly referred to by many as Yellow Sallies, and the greenish colored species of the family Chlorperlidae (Sallflies). As widespread and uniquely diverse as stoneflies may be, the tendency to overlook their nymphs enormous and constant presence...
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