Crane Fly larva

[sandfly]

1.5" long
Found Pine creek 6/2/2006

 

[willscreek]

I've come to the conclusion that a simple caddis nymph would work for that. It looks much like the black caddis in another post in this forum and I imagine I'm not the first to think this. Something else that came to mind when I saw that was mealworm or waxworm. There's an oldie from my bait days.

 

[flipnfly]

i used to use them for bait and the bass used to really tear them up i used to seine them from a small feeder creek into the monongahela river (probably toilet drains ) them crayfish and a monniw with an orange stripe down the side the cranefly larvae i used to get were like 2.5 to 3 inches long and fat really fat

 

[sandfly]

I've come to the conclusion that a simple caddis nymph would work for that. It looks much like the black caddis in another post in this forum

caddis will not work for this...they are huge;
here is one with a size 14 yellow sally.

 

[govtmule]

so what about a size 14 or a 16 adult cranefly?..you're telling me the larva for that adult is 1.5" long?....i've seen humangous craneflies so i have no doubt their larva is probably gimangous like that photo...but for smaller ones?...

 

[sandfly]

check out this:
http://iz.carnegiemnh.org/cranefly/index.htm

 

[Chaz]

A couple of friends of mine use rubber worms in tannish yellow when fishing stocked streams. I use a yellow weenie. I killem with it.

 

[DGC]

The differences among cranefly larvae are extreme. The Antocha live in rocky areas of trout streams, are very small and hatch in the stream. The big ones you only see in silty stream sections after they have been disturbed are a juicy wriggling, writhing specimen and depending on which one, easily a couple of inches long. I have seen these in the Yellow Breeches. Whitlock came up with a pattern for the big ones. The little Antocha versions are probably only useful as wet flies, if then. The mid size ones buzz the surface to lay eggs and get attention from trout. I have skated hackled dries with occasional success after seeing them in action, but the misses outnumber the hookups, at least for me.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Here is a perfect fly for this.

This was posted on another forum and its one I use now. Its just a hook, lead, rubberband and brown dubbing. Easy and a nice tie.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Another image

 

[sandfly]

Here is one I have used;

 

[outsider]

Very nice Bob. The creative art of fly tying.

 

[PATroutChaser]

The Carnegie Natural History museum has an entire display on the Cranefly right now...crazy how much there was on them.

Don't forget the old Walt's Worm as an imitation...

 

[3wt7X]

PATroutChaser...you beat me to the punch...I was going to remark about how good of an imitation the walt's worm is for that bug. I'll +1 that!!!

 

[YoughnessMonster]

I like the way the rubber band looks. Great segments

 

[Chaz]

Here's a pic of the dry I use in a #18. Caught trout in 14 states with it.

 

[littlelehigh]

Chaz,

Nice pattern looks like the one that use to be posted on the LLFS website.



How do you fish a dry crane fly? Do you blind cast it to areas you know fish are looking up in? I never see fish on the LL regularly rising to crane flies on top but then again they are most active when 6 other bugs are hatching so it's always hard to tell what they are "looking" for.

 

[Chaz]

Yes you do, you just don't know you do. I fish it to rising trout, especially if they are splashy rises. Sometime tie on an Al's Rat as a dropper, it's deadly fished that way. Been using the pattern since before the the shop was there. Over twenty years, it appeared in one of the first issues of Mid-Atlantic FF Magazine, in an article by Charley Meck.

 

[lestrout]

It's a given that the aquatic form (just before emergence) of bugs will be smaller than the emerged specimen, at least from the standpoint of mass. In general, the mayflies, chironomids, caddis and stonies don't eat once they come out, and then there's the exoskeleton shuck they left behind. To me a size 16 emerger will translate into an 18 once emerged.

But the cranes, at least locally here in Chester County, are the most astounding for size disparity. The VFTU runs a fly fishing school and we often collect a mess of bugs and put them in a dishpan for the students to observe. Cranefly larvae are sometimes 60mm or more in those collections.

One of the members was hatching various bugs in an aquarium, and saw that those giant larvae hatched into size 18s.

tl
les

 

[jayL]

Littlelehigh,

I fish them like a Caddis. Mostly dead drifted, but also twitched and swung. A down and across cast with a cross current swing has also been killer.