Just a brief post this week as we’ve been busy tracking Stoneflies.
Flyfishing is always about the aquatic insects. However, in late spring there is an increase in activity. As rivers come out of their winter hibernation, water warms and invertebrates start to move about.
This usually means dry fly fishing . . . that’s the best kind.
Plecoptera; stonefly (Pteronarcys californica: Salmon fly and Calineuria Californica; Golden Stones) have been burrowed in gravel on the river’s bottom for a few years.
When the water temperature gets around fifty degrees, these very large bugs crawl to the bank, shuck their aquatic shell and fly up into the bushes.
Come evening they fly back over the water and deposit their eggs, which sink to the rocky bottoms and the cycle starts over.
To a flyfisher this means those large fish who normally hold in deep pools are lured out into the shallows along the bank to feast on stoneflies. Thus, we are prowling river’s edge hoping for a hook-up.