Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Signs of Life

Case- Maker Caddisflies
I stopped along the Dry Fork River on Sunday (2/24/13), just to let the dogs out for a walk. The sky was blue and the winds were somewhat calm but the air was still quite cool. We pulled of in the mud and snow; downstream from Jenningston. I noticed that there was some underwater activity going on.

There were hundreds of these Case-Maker Caddidflies clinging to the rocks in the calm shallow water areas. Some were actually crawling around, seeming to jockey for position and intercept some rays of sun.

Case-Maker Caddisflies are of the (Limnephildae) family. They live in stationary waters and can be found in the streams margins and calm backwaters.They are climbers and clingers and do not attach their cases to the substrate. They are shredders and feed upon decaying vegetation. The stick-worms in the photo are probably from the genus Pycnopsyche  and will hatch into adults during mid-summer. No matter what you want to call them; they are fish food. There are millions of them out there in the streams and they are available year-round. They don't look like Power-bait either, do they?

Dry Fork
Posted by High Virginia Outdoors  Photos (c)2013 High Virginia Images

3 comments:

  1. It's really cool that you just stumbled upon them while they were all active! Definitely something that some people would never even notice.

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    1. I was just standing there, watching the dogs mess around and get tangled up. When I put my sunglasses on and looked into the water, they were everywhere. I was really surprised when I started noticing movement. Some were quite active.. It really seemed as if they were moving to spots where the sun was hitting. I'm not an entomologist, just observant. Thank you for Reading !!

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  2. No problem! It was quite interesting. I'm not an entomologist either, but hopefully a soon-to-be fish biologist, and I'm in an aquatic entomology class now so this caught my eye. I actually went out and sampled some caddisflies of the same family last week.

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