Green Drakes

[Chetty82]

Does anyone know how the green drake come to the little juniata. My father-in-law used to be a park ranger up in penns creek and one year he brought about a couple hundred green drake down to the little j in a week. this was many years ago of course. Just seeing if u disagree with this.

 

[Padraic]

I don't disagree that he did it, but it would take thousands of insects to start a colony. Oh, and your fishing license does give you permission to collect mayflies, but only 50 of any given species.

 

[PaulG]

Years ago my friend tried to take white flies from the river and put them in Clarks creek, didn't work!

PaulG

 

[MKern]

midges, sulphurs, and caddis are probably the best bet for transplant.

 

[jayL]

Tricos are pretty resilient. Wonder if they'd work?

 

[Dizzy]

It has been tried many times in the past, specifically with Green Drakes as I recall (and others too)… I don’t remember reading about ANY successful transplants however. Even trying to RE-introduce insects back into waters where they previously existed didn’t seem to work.

Seems like they find their way back themselves eventually (if conditions are right).

 

[tomgamber]

I'll look for it later but there is a very successful stone fly project out west.

 

[Chetty82]

I dont know but my father in law said he is the one that introduced the drake to the little j that is what he said I didnt know if i believed it I just figured I would get your opinion on that

 

[dryflyguy]

Chetty:

I'm not sure of the time period you're referring to here.
But here's my experience on the little j with them.
I used to fish to a very sparse hatch of them on the espy farm section in the mid 80's.
Then the hatch seemed to explode on the river in the early 90's, and provided some fantastic fishing.
But they disppeared - along with all the other hatches - after the chemical spill in '95.
I quite fishing the river for about 5 years after that, then heard that the hatches were returning at the turn of the decade.
I started fishing the river again in 2000, - and saw just a couple of them hatching then - in the upper part of the gorge.
I figured that they probably worked back down into the river from spruce creek.
Now, I really haven' been looking for them lately. But apparently they've returned again?

 

[littlejuniata]

If there are severe floods at the "right" time the drake nymphs would be washed into the river from Spruce which has or has had great Drake hatches, then they would spread from there. You might think I am looney but I was sitting on the banks of the Barree Pool one evening at Green Drake time and there were thousands and thousands of drakes all flying downstream??.. THe Sping following the macro kill I was checking the pool and there was one lonley Drake emerging, I think there were four trout after that lone fly, the trout were starving of course due to some environmental event caused by someone? I still see red when I think of that macro kill and the starving trout.