It’s Green Drake Time!!

by Judy Lehmberg, BioPics Photography, www.vernelehmberg.com

The fly fishers in the crowd will already know about green drakes and what fun they are. Green drakes are a type of mayfly that is hatching out on Henry’s Fork of the Snake River just west of Yellowstone right now. Before I started spending all of my time filming wildlife I was a fly fisher. I say “was” because I used to fish everyday all summer long. Now I only fish a few times a year. Yesterday we went to Henry’s Fork and took photos of green drakes. It really made me miss fishing, but I love what I am doing now too. Green drakes are special to fly fishers because they are big, over an inch long and all the fish in the stream, especially the big ones will come up for a hatching green drake.

Mayflies are a primitive group of insects with some unique characteristics. Generally you can tell a primitive insect from a more advanced one by how much they can fold their wings flat against their backs. Think of a housefly. They are advanced because they can fold their wings flat on their back. Mayflies are primitive because their wings can’t be folded at all. They are unique in two ways, their metamorphosis and their digestive system. You know a butterfly has four stages to its life cycle, the egg, the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the adult. Mayflies also have four stages but they are different and unique to the order ephemeroptera. They start the same as a butterfly, with an egg followed by an aquatic nymph stage similar to the butterflies’ caterpillar stage.

Mayflies skip the chrysalis stage and go straight to an adult, which is usually referred to as a subadult because they can’t reproduce, yet. Think about the order name ephemeroptera. It is derived from the word ephemeral, which means a short life, or short lasting. Mayfly nymphs can last months or even years. But the subadult lasts only a day or so, sometimes less. It is so short lived that it doesn’t even have mouthparts or a digestive system. It can’t eat. All it can do is get ready to mate. Usually within 24 hours the subadult molts into a sexually reproducing adult fly fishers call a spinner. Spinners look similar to the subadult but have shiny, more translucent wings. They fly up in the air above the water and mate. The males then fall to the water and die. The females lay eggs and then they die. They have fulfilled their only job, to reproduce. Trout love spinners because they know spinners won’t fly off. I love green drakes because the trout love them but also because they are pretty. All mayflies are delicate, beautiful insects but the green drake is special because of its large size and because it reminds me of a lot of beautiful fish.