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On a Winter's Day:
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By Dean Hansen
Ah, reverie! Remember those days in June or July when the evening air above your favorite trout stream is filled with mayflies and caddisflies? Can you picture in your mind duns hatching on the surface, caddisflies mating in the shrubbery or forming dancing swarms of adults above an alder, spent spinners on the water?
Even though snow and cold have driven many of us to our fly-tying tables, insect activity continues throughout the winter in and on our Midwestern streams and rivers, and fish will feed, occasionally with gusto.
One winter day, enlivened by a warm sun and temperatures in the 40s, I decided to explore Valley Creek, a small, spring-fed trout stream near my home. It was about noon as I waded through the plowed snow on the shoulder of the road and saw one of my favorite winter insects: a wingless crane fly known as Chionea. If you've never encountered a Chionea before, you may dismiss your first sighting as simply a lost spider. But count the legs--spiders have eight, while this creature has six.
Chionea is the insect I consistently find in abundance on the snow even when the temperature is only in the mid-20s. Its dark-brown coloration shows out against the snow.
I slushed through the snow towards the stream, and sure enough, there were the winter midges, the creatures I studied in graduate school.
First I saw one several feet from the open stream and then more and more as I approached the stream edge. The sexes were easy to distinguish. The males have antennae that look like bottle-cleaning brushes, while the females have short, plain antennae. Both sexes were walking slowly on the snow. Looking at the splash line of some of the larger rocks in the stream, I found an occasional cast pupal skin--proof that the emergence had taken place recently.
I'm sure I would have seen egg-laying females touching the water surface if I would have stayed longer, but I wanted to stop at the Apple River, a larger stream than Valley Creek. As usual for the winter months, I had the whole river to myself. What I was hoping to see was any of several winter stoneflies. They had been a dependable hatch here in other years, but all I saw this day were several hundred "snow fleas."
Looking something like coarse ground pepper on the fresh snow, snowfleas live in the grass and leaf litter and, for whatever unknown reason, make their way up through the snow by the uncountable thousands sometimes to walk slowly about on a mild winter day. They aren't really fleas, but are rather a very primitive type of insect. Their ability to jump many times their length when disturbed, by means of an almost unbelievable spring device on their underside, gives them their common name.
Where were the tiny winter stones? Ice extended out from the shore of the river. Very possibly any emergence and mating were taking place on the underside of the ice shelves. It's a good way to avoid bird predation. Or maybe I was just too early--I'll come back in March to catch any more stonefly action.
By now it was 3 p.m. and I wanted to stop at another small trout stream, Brown's Creek. I parked the car, waded through the plowed snow, and was surprised to see a sow bug walking about on the snow. This was a first for me.
As I approached the stream, I constantly scanned the snow's surface for any tiny black dot indicating some sort of insect. I saw none, until I came across a winged winter crane fly (trichocerid ). Its long, delicate legs were just like those of any crane flies one encounters in the warmer months. This one was walking, but I have often observed several males flying in a swarm above small shrubs.
The hours spent outside have a certain allure for me. Midwest winters are long and a quiet walk along a familiar fishing stream looking for whatever insects are out can help alleviate the winter blahs.
Try it sometime. Find an open stream on a warm day and keep your eyes glued on the snow for something small and dark. Maybe you'll be rewarded with the sight of a winter stone, a winter midge, snow fleas, an errant spider, a wingless or winged caddisfly, or who knows?
Dean Hansen has a Ph. D. in aquatic entomology and teaches classses in stream ecology. His column appears regularly in Midwest Fly Fishing.
| Here a three tested patterns for winter trout: | |
| Orange Scud Hook: Tiemco 2457 #14 or 3761 #16 Tail: Orange hackle fibers (optional) Rib: Fine gold wire Back: 1/8" Scud Back or plastic strip Body: 1/2 orange rabbit and 1/2 clear Antron cut up and blended with the rabbit. A brass or copper bead can be added. |
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Serendipidty Hook: Tiemco 2457 #12 - #18 |
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Palamino Midge
Hook: Tiemco 2457 or 2487 #16 - #20 Tail: Red ultra micro-chenille tied on so that it entends one hook length behind the hook Back: Clear Antron tied over the body with a tuft left on Body: Gray dubbing tied full |
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copyright Midwest Fly Fishing Magazine 1999
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