Green Drake Mayfly
from John
Called them fishflies. Used to catch those things by the score and put them into jars. Took a while to realize they died overnight because that’s about how long they live.
Thanks for the photo John
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Glad you liked the photo, DT. Yeah, that mayfly is definitely a Green Drake, but many folks refer to mayflies in general, especially when the huge hatches which occur around say, Houghton Lake, or up in Alpena, or even south by Cedar Springs as fishflies. That Green Drake is just hatched, watched it climb from its nymphal shuck, take flight, and to my knee it went. It’ll fly to the trees, molt, its wings will change from the mottled look to clear, then it’ll fly back over the creek mate, and then die. Trout love ’em!
My fishfly-collecting years were spent north of Detroit just off Lake St Clair. I knew them as fishflies before I heard mayflies.
Yep – nice photo. I don’t insist on posting only my stuff; the more the merrier.
An interesting note in the evolution of mayflies ….. John’s description of the life cycle is correct, but when they mate over the stream, the female goes back to the water to lay the eggs, which then settle to the bottom where they are held among the stones for hatching into the larva. The mayflies always fly upstream but ‘just the right amount’ so that the deposited eggs settle into about the same location as from which their parents came. If this were not the case, it would only take a few (hundred ?) generations for the entire species to be transported downstream and leave the upstream river ’empty’. Evolution, providence, coincidence ??? A mystery.