Too Bad There Are No Trout Streams In Spotswood

[Peter Ogrodnik]

I experience one hell of a "hatch" on saturday, the best one I have ever seen while spackling a room. Actually, the hatch occurred in my front yard, and it was one of the few times in my life that I knew exactly what was going on, bug wise. While I was finish spackling the master bedroom in my house, I heard my wife and 10-year old screaming about the bugs--and my wife hollaring about termites. I went into my front yard and saw that my house was absolutely covered with cinnamin ants (fiery red-brown) about a size 18, with dun-gray wings down across their back almost like a stonefly. I knew what they were right away from countless pix that I have seen in flyfishing/tying mags, though I have never experienced anything like this on stream. I even got my old terrestrial box out and showed my wife one of my flies next to the natural. I wish that I would have had the presence of mind to get some pix--but wifey was hot to get the bugs off of "her" house and she was madly spraying them with Raid before I knew it. Out of curiousity I called my exterminator, and he assured me that these were in fact harmless "citronella" ants--he said if you put a bunch of them in a bag they smell like citronella--who would ever be the first to think of something like that!~!!! The interesting thing was that Walt, my house-bug guy, said that he got about 10 calls re these bugs on saturday. So I wonder, did anyone experience anything like this on stream Saturday. Boy, was I ever wishin' I went fishin' on saturday. I actually wrote this incident up in my fishing log, and I think its the first entry where I wasn't ever near running water!