How to Fish a Damsel Fly Nymph Updated

How to Fish a Damsel Fly Nymph

June 3, 2016

Damselflies: Fish a Irksome and Steady Retrieve

For many, our kickoff encounter with adult damselflies was as kids, chasing them effectually with butterfly nets along the edge of a lake or swimming. These oftentimes colourful insects have long, slender abdomens and four thin wings that, at rest, are held along the back of the abdomen. Did y'all know that damselflies are a prime food source for trout?

Damselflies belong to the insect lodge Odonata. Worldwide, there are over 650 species of this relatively primitive order, widely distributed from the torrid zone to the Arctic. Odonata is broken down into two sub-orders: Anisoptera, the dragonflies, and Zygoptera, the damselflies. Virtually 200 species of Zygoptera are found throughout their global range.

Life Cycle

Damselfly life cycles vary in length from ane to three years. Damselflies exhibit an "incomplete metamorphosis," with only three developmental stages: egg, larva (nymph), and adult, but no pupal phase.

During their development, larvae shed their exoskeletons many times to abound. The shedding is chosen a "molt," while the catamenia betwixt moltings is called an "instar."

Damselfly nymphs from a throat pump sample. | Brian Chan.

Larval habitats include the shallow or littoral (edge) zones of lakes, ponds, brackish waters, and the slower reaches of rivers and streams. Damselfly larvae are hands distinguished past their long, slender bodies, singled-out wing pads, and well-adult mouthparts. Larvae besides possess three paddle-shaped caudal gills (or lamellae) located at the tip of the abdomen. While these gills are an integral office of the respiratory system, they also act as rudders or stabilizers during the larva's sinusoidal (South-shaped) swimming movement.

At maturity, some larvae can reach lengths over 35 millimetres. Juvenile and maturing larvae seek the cover provided by benthic (near-bottom) and emergent vegetation growing on the shoal or littoral zones of the lake or stream. Ideal habitats are thick mats of stonewort, pondweed, or milfoil growing in h2o depths from one to 5 metres.

Damselfly larvae are carnivores: they crawl through vegetation in search of shrimp, mayfly nymphs, chironomid larvae, and zooplankton. Their lower jaw is articulated, and can be extended to grasp unsuspecting prey. Larval colouration often closely matches their habitat, helping them to avoid predators similar trout. When fully developed, mature damselfly larvae swim to inside most a metre of the surface, searching for emergent vegetation to consummate their transformation to adults.

Patches of longstem bulrush and cattail make excellent sites for mature nymphs to crawl up stems out of the water. The pare of each at present-exposed larva dries and splits along the back of the thorax, allowing the "teneral" (soft-bodied adult) grade to emerge. Over several hours, the newly emerged adults complete development and are able to wing away from the water.

Adult damselflies tin can live for several months, feeding heavily on smaller flying insects similar mosquitoes and mayflies. Mating typically occurs within a couple of weeks of emergence, often preceded by intricate displays of courtship whose finish-result is adults flying around in tandem. Egg-laying typically occurs on emergent or floating vegetation. The females employ their ovipositor to create an opening in a plant stem into which eggs are deposited.

Fishing the Hatch

Trout patrol the openings between mats of submerged and surface vegetation as they search for both juvenile and maturing larvae. Damselfly larvae are most vulnerable to trout when they begin the "emergence swim" to consummate their life bike. The observant angler should look for large numbers of sinusoidally swimming larvae in the upper layers of the water column. Trout will pick off the larvae as they make their manner to patches of bulrushes or cattails.

It's center-pounding action when trout hit or roll onto the stems of bulrushes to knock larvae or emerging adults into water only a metre deep. The trout then quickly plow back to feast on the struggling insects.

Wing patterns representing the larvae can vary from quite elementary to very realistic in design. Patterns may non have to exist too realistic during the showtime few days of the mature larval emergence swim but, as the trout continue to gorge, they can go fussy as to size, shape, and colour. Since the colour of damselfly larvae will match their habitat, consider that when choosing an appropriate fly. The natural pond activity of marabou fibres makes them an fantabulous material when tying both suggestive and more realistic larval patterns.

Damselfly design. | Brian Chan.

Intermediate/slow sinking and floating fly-lines are platonic for angling damselfly patterns. The intermediate sinking line is all-time used to imitate the larval swim from the lake-bottom to the upper water column. Floating lines are perfect for matching mature larvae swimming within the upper metre of water to surface vegetation, too equally for presenting floating adult patterns when fish are being taken in shallow water.

Damselfly larvae are not fast swimmers. They maintain a slow just steady side-to-side action whether swimming upwardly off the lake-bottom, or moving horizontally through the water. A slow, steady hand-twist recall, with the occasional side-to-side twitch of the rod tip, is normally all that is needed to attract the attending of a cruising trout.