Thursday, March 24, 2011

Early Stonefly



















During a brief, non-fishing lunch break behind the house today I was excited to find a large, adult stonefly scurrying along the neighbor's riverside rip-rap. After nothing but midges in these parts for the past few months, this size 8-10 monster was great to see.

My assumption is that it's a skwala, but I'm not positive - maybe someone can confirm it for me. Although it was just a single stonefly, you can bet I'll be throwing some large dries this weekend.

If I lived on the Bitterroot River this sighting would be commonplace, but on the Gallatin it's fairly newsworthy - particularly this early in the year.

4 comments:

  1. Yep - I'd say so. They're early! I haven't seen them before the first week of April. Good news!

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  2. Wow that's pretty interesting... looks Skwala to me man, weird one though, the nymph looks like a golden up front and skwala on the abdomen. The adult looks like it has a dark neck. Usually you can see some kind orange gold there... but f-n awesome that you chased it down and got a pic..
    Now, a report of you taking a fish on a dry stone pattern on the big Gal, now that'd be da chit!

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  3. Both photos are of the same adult. I tried fishing a skwala dry for about an hour today, even presenting it to fish rising to midges - no takers. I didn't see another adult skwala, nor did I see any shucks.

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  4. Looks exactly like our Skwala on the Missouri. That's about the same amount we see on most days. 1.

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