Green Drakes

Ephemera guttulata's size, numbers, and hatching characteristics have made it a favorite of fly fishermen since the sport first came to our waters. Caucci and Nastasi described the addiction in Hatches II:

"To many afflicted Eastern fishermen, the 'Green Drake Hatch' is as irresistable and habit-forming as black jack, whiskey, or easy women."

It is on par with the Midwest's Hexagenia limbata hatch for its ability to lure huge piscivorous (Piscivorous: Anything which eats primarily fish is a piscivore.) brown trout to eat insects at the surface once a year. The special charm of the Green Drake hatch is that it often takes place during pleasant Spring afternoons. It can be challenging because the large flies are easy for trout to inspect in the daylight and they feed very selectively, especially late in the hatch.

The Green Drakes are on the decline due to environmental degradation.

This species, together with Drunella doddsii, creates the beloved Western Green Drake hatches, the Rocky Mountains' answer to the popular Ephemeridae drakes of the East.

I have not fished out West to experience this hatch, so this page relies on information collected from angling authors. Unfortunately these books conflict with each other on several points. I encourage readers who've fished this hatch to share their experiences in the comments and help clarify the information.

This secondary species creates the Western Green Drake hatch together with Drunella grandis. There are very few differences between the habits of these two species, and they are almost always discussed together in fly fishing books, so for most of the characteristics of doddsii I refer you to the Drunella grandis page.

It starts like a rise of small trout. There are dimples on the surface, little fingerlings eating midges, perhaps. But these are no fish. The water breaks and up pop the yellow sails of a giant Hexagenia dun, then another and another. A vortex appears in a flash below the mayfly and it vanishes in a slurp so loud it echoes off the distant bank. A square tail like a shark fin breaks the surface behind the swirl as a brown trout twice the size of your net turns back toward his deeper lair. The Hex hatch is on.

This Midwestern legend plays out every year on calm, dark, humid nights in early July. Anglers who only fly fish once a year drive hundreds of miles to play their part in the drama, while the mayflies themselves make the television news by showing up on doppler radar or calling snowplows out of dormancy to remove layers of Hexagenia duns from the bridges. In the cold trout rivers of Wisconsin and Michigan, huge nocturnal brown trout whose usual menu consists of smaller browns become, for a week or so, prime dry fly quarry.

These are the second largest mayflies in the United States, behind the related Litobrancha recurvata flies.

This species is reportedly important in places, but it is not discussed very much in angling literature. I suspect its importance is very localized.