Snowflake Mayflies
Like most common names, "Snowflake Mayfly" can refer to more than one taxon. They're previewed below, along with 5 specimens. For more detail click through to the scientific names.
These are very rarely called Snowflake Mayflies.
These mayflies are a sleeper hatch which has barely received a nod in the fly fishing literature. Their abundance never matches that of the classic superhatches, but their importance can.
Their primary claim to fame is their peculiar shape, both as nymphs and as adults. On most rivers they are a rare oddity, but there are places where their spinner falls elicit greedy rises and staunch selectivity from the trout. These spinners never even come close to blanketing the water, but trout have such an affinity for them that even their sparsest falls should excite the angler.
I favor two explanations for their importance. First, they have a very stout profile, and late-season beetle action suggests that trout like this trait. Second, the
Baetisca action lasts for up to a month on a single stretch of water. This caters to the selective trout's love of the familiar.
These are very rarely called Snowflake Mayflies.
A cult following is something to which few insects can lay claim, but the tiny
Tricorythodes mayflies certainly qualify. Their widespread, reliable, heavy hatches draw impressive rises of ultra-selective trout which demand the most of a technical dry-fly angler's skills.
It is surprising that such a great hatch took so long to come to the attention of fly fishermen. The Tricos were first introduced to anglers in a 1969 Outdoor Life article by Vincent Marinaro, who misidentified them as
Caenis. By the early 1970s the identification had been corrected but Swisher and Richards still wrote in Selective Trout,
"Few anglers are familiar with these extremely small but important mayflies." The next wave of publications boosted
Tricorythodes to its current fame. I suspect their early dismissal was due in part to tackle limitations; anglers in the 1950s had no means to effectively tie and present size 22-28 flies.
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