Anyone up for a little work / challenge?

[Caddis]

Here's my game plan. I'd like to bring to you a full fledged entomology site with all available clean water aquatic life available.

What this would require is that you bring a camera with a flash (even a throw away w/flash will do) to wherever you will be fishing. You don't have to carry the camera around with you if you don't want to, you can run down to the river and take photo's before or after you fish (if of course you fish a short distance to where you park).

Other than a camera, you will need a seine and that's about it.

The technique is quite simple. Go to the river, place your seine in front of a rock (facing downstream)... lift the rocks around and shake them a little bit directly in front of the seine. Whatever was on the rock will be washed off into your seine. Now examine your net for nymphs. Separate each one and take seperate photo's of them. You can place them on rocks to take these photo's. Get up close and personal with them, or at least as close as your lense permits. I stress to use a flash even on sunny days for the innexperienced photographer. The reason for this is because in order for me to identify them accurately, I will need a nice bright photo. Of course digital camera's are better because you can then post them right onto the site.

Once you post your photo's or mail me your photo's (snail mail), I'll identify them and post them.

All you have to do is keep a small log of what day and time you took the photo('s), and write down what you think it might be and why.

I think this is a great excersize that will help all of us to Identify insects in various rivers around the general area (NY, NJ, PA)... This can also help to determine the cleanliness of some rivers too!

Anyone interested?

 

[sqerl]

hey

great idea! I always bring along a camera, camcorder whenever I'm fishing... I always see things that amaze me and I want a a photo reference for as many of these instances as possible! besides, i always spend a little time looking under rocks when I'm near a stream... isnt that what they're there for?

 

[JasonM]

I am good for that. I actually go one step further. I carry insect bottles with me to take the nymphs home. I use some kind of bug preserver stuff that I picked up at fly shop to keep them.

 

[Unregistered]

You need to carry a millimeter ruler also. Size is very important when identifying an insect. Length isn't something you can accurately judge from a photograph.

 

[JOE.T]

Sounds like a plan.At one point I had collected almost every mayfly nymph in the catskills.With the winter approaching though there wont be many mature nymphs available.Ill get what I can over the next month or so.Dennis it sounds like you had fun with the entomolgy part of the school.

 

[Caddis]

Hopefully we'll have a nice little collection between us. Joe, the ento part of the class helped me to understand quite a bit about Mayflies! There were a few things I was unsure of and the class fixed me right up!

If you have any bugs, try to post them. JasonM already posted 1 in the photo gallery. It's a StoneFly Nymph.

Anyone else, if you have photo's or live samples, sendem over, I'll take the pictures and ID them, then post them. As "unregistered" mentioned which I forgot was that you definetely need to measure the size in millimeters.