I made it out to the creek the other for the second time since the new year. All and all i have done better. What was interesting was the fact that, while fishing around access five, I found what looked to be an adult stone fly. The wings folded falt, unlike a caddis, and I am 98 % sure that it is a stone. It would have been about a size 10 or so. Has anyone else seen any sign of these guys in the creek? In additon to that guy saw some midges, mosquitoes and tan mayflies, probably calibeatis but i didnt find any nymphs so i dont know for sure.
What color was the bug that you saw? I've seen little yellow stoneflies on the creek. Others have claimed to have seen salmonflies. Once, I saw what I thought was a huge stonefly. When I got home, I looked it up and found that it was a snakefly. Both fold their wings over their back in the same manner, but the snakefly is not aquatic.
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"Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught."
It had a brown body, and I looked some pictures of snake flies, don't quite match it. Either way I saw all of one of these guys in several hours of cruising around, so they are probably pretty rare around there. Upon further review, it would appear to be smaller salmon fly. No fish were interested in any imitations of it that I could find though.
I did a stream ecology project once for a biology class where a group of us gathered benthic invertebrates from a small creek. We ended up with a lot of scuds, mayfly nymphs, caddisfly larvae, and midge larvae. We even found a few damselfly nymphs, dragonfly nymphs, hellgramites, leeches and stonefly nymphs. There weren't very many stoneflies, but they were there. I'm sure that they're in Putah as well, but as far as numbers go, I don't think that there's too many of them. I'll bet Bono would know more about the insect populations in Putah Creek due to the surveys that he's done.
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"Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught."
I would assume the fly that Mr 101fish saw was the Little Yellow Stone or the Little Yellow Sally(same thing).I normally see these in the spring thru mid summer on Putah and mainly near access #5 also up above access #1.I did see one last Sunday morning @ access #5.Ireally started seeing these stoneflies at Putah about 7 or 8 years ago after some very high flows cleaned the creek of its siltier areas,and made it more stonefly friendly.
Like Greg, the only stone flies that I can remember seeing on Putah are Little Yellow Stones. However, I have seen small black stone flies on Hat Creek in late October. Also, I was browsing through some old magazines and I found an article on "Fluttering Winter Stones" in the Winter 2006 edition of "Flyfishing & Tying Journal". The stoneflies in the article are also black.