The rivers of Pierce County are in fine shape. Extra flow and stained water will let anglers get closer to fish without spooking them. Stripping black buggers #6-10 and swinging Olive bodied soft hackles size 14-16 worked like a dream. Standard indicator fishing also worked well. Golden stones were in the air along with some sporadic mayfly flights. Few fish have been hitting the surface on the lower Kinni in the last few days. Yellow crane flies are also in the air and on the water every day now. Anglers are waiting on the light colored PAD’s, sulfurs and Hendrickson which should come in the next few weeks. The big rains may have dislodged some of those nymphs from the rocks and spit them into the St. Croix/Mississippi. We will have to see.
Butterflies have been all over the last week. They are such a pleasure to watch. My clients and I identified a bunch of different species yesterday. The butterflies above were identified by poking through a few books this morning. They are Giant Swallowtails, some of the largest in the family. They were drinking moisture and minerals from the sand when we found this group of 3.
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Jan
The PAD refers to “Pale Afternoon Dun”. A number of us have taken to using this acronym for the mayfly that hatches on a number of the local rivers around this time of year. The scientific community for the last ten years has named and renamed, classified and reclassified this one and I am not certain the name is completely nailed down yet. Jason at Troutnut has done a good job of explaining it. My former zoology professor at UW River Falls worked long and hard getting this one identified.
The most productive time to fish this hatch as I have watched it over the last 20+ years is in the afternoon, Hence the change from “Pale Morning Dun”, the group it is lumped in with now, to Pale Afternoon Dun. It seems that the emergence is most prolific in the afternoon as well. I am taking a big step here by creating my own new common name description of this bug, our local bug, but I think it more clearly defines its habits to the local fly angling community. After all common names are created by us commoners who have trouble spelling and speaking the dead language of latin . It just makes more sense. I am hoping I will not be shunned by the scientific community or burned at the stake as a heretic. There also is a Pale Evening Dun, but I am not sure if they exists around here, so what the hell. This definition helps out my quest.
A subspecies is a taxonomic group less distinct than the primary stock (species) from which it originates. The characteristics attributed to subspecies are generally derived from changes that have taken place or evolved as a result of geographical distribution or isolation from the primary species or nominate subspecies, which is a subspecies indicated by the repetition of the specific name.
Works for me.
I remember being on the Kinni so many years ago when I first witnessed the hatch. It was amazing that a new bug had ‘invaded’ the river. I was stumbling around wishing the hatch would end –after four hours my arm was about to fall off. Bumped into Skip, Red, and two other senior veterans of the Kinni, they were even more dumbfounded than I was. -J
PEDs,PMDs,PADs,PNDs….. i am sure there are more we could come up with, any way, Sulfurs were out already on the Rush last evening!
Works for me.
I remember being on the Kinni so many years ago when I first witnessed the hatch. It was amazing that a new bug had ‘invaded’ the river. I was stumbling around wishing the hatch would end –after four hours my arm was about to fall off. Bumped into Skip, Red, and two other senior veterans of the Kinni, they were even more dumbfounded than I was. -J
I think the first time I saw that hatch was 1989.
I was down by the quanset hut below the lower powerline and about 11 AM on a sunny warm late May day the bugs just started pouring off.
All I had that was close was a half-dozen # 16 yellow bodied Humpy’s. I caught fish after fish until all my flies were shredded.
What is really amazing is how un-discoverd this hatch remained. For years you could pretty much have the late morning-early afternoon fishing to yourself.
I took Dick Hanousek down one time several years ago and we hit an epic emergence. It was one of those special days where we started fishing Hendricksons in the late morning and fished them all the way up until about 5 PM and then the Sulphurs started in.
After 9 hours of catching fish at will he turned to me and said Jay I have fished all over the world and the biomass of bugs and quality of fishing compares to anything I’ve ever expereinced.
Light mayflies are already showing in other regions of the Driftless so it is time to start paying attention.
I do remember. That section and just up stream is kind of the epicenter of the hatch from my experience. We just called the hatch ginger, ginger, ginger back then. The fish are greedy in the beginning and get a bit more persnickety as time goes on, sometimes two weeks. Big run-off 10 days ago scoured many rocks in that section. The nymphs were super abundant but not quite as many this last week. I think the biomass may be down a bit this year, just timing perhaps. Will see.
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