Gypsy moths

ratgunner

ratgunner

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Joined
Dec 19, 2009
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They're really bad this year in Clark's valley. Catterpillars everywhere.
I'm guessing the trout eat them ? Any good patterns ?
 
Simple pattern. Palmer grizzly hackle around black foam cylinders and then trim the hackle. I used this pattern years ago when the gypsy moths were bad here. Worked like a charm.Trout do eat gypsy moths.
 
I haven't noticed the gypsy caterpillars yet, but the tent caterpillars are the worse I have seen in years. And seemingly really early too. I usually see them mid summer.
 
salmonoid wrote:
the tent caterpillars are the worse I have seen in years. .

Same here.
I'm seeing them in a lot of places. Yesterday I had a bunch of curious European tourists who were looking at them on Little Round Top and photographing the clusters. When they asked me in broken English what they were and I replied, "tent caterpillars" - they just looked at me oddly. Lost in translation I suppose.
 
With respect to gypsy moths, I have seen some of them around here too.

I can't say I've had great fishing to gypsy moth patterns in the past but I have long carried a couple dusty gypsy moth flies in my terrestrial box. Maybe this year I'll give 'em a try.
 
I have seen lots of gypsy moth catterpillars here in Perry Co. Last year was not bad.
 
The gypsy moth outbreaks are fairly spotty this year. Some of the heaviest infestations that I've see this year have been in Schuylkill County. They are really working over Chestnut Oak trees very hard.
 
Yup.Fished the Gorge the other day and on my walk in and out, I picked a few off me...but noticed them fairly heavily on a few oaks....birds don't like them,but trout definitely do eat them,not as aggressively as Cicadas though.
 
I wonder how this will affect the acorn crop.
 
I remember reading somewhere that the gypsy caterpillars were a bit bitter, which is why the birds did not like them. I observed a number of years ago, on multiple occasions, that the caterpillars died when they started chomping on mountain laurel, which made me wonder if mountain laurel had some sort of natural toxin in it.

I also am curious about the high concentrations of pests in some areas this year. Last year, it was documented in hemlocks in Cook Forest a marked decrease of the wooly adeglid, presumably because of the cold. I have some hemlocks that are hedges on my property lines and they seemed to show a decrease in adeglids last year. This year, they are just covered with white eggs sacks, even though it was colder this past winter (ergo, maybe it wasn't the cold that did them in, or maybe we didn't see Cook Forest cold levels). There are more tent caterpillars around this year than in recent years, and apparently isolated pockets of gypsy moth infestations as well. I'd have thought that the cold winter would have suppressed some of the invasives' populations. On the other hand, I am seeing very few stink bugs, and no box elder bugs (although the latter are not invasives).
 
Yes, mountain laurel is mildly poisonous to mammals. It's a relatively common cause of winter mortality among deer (when other food sources are unavailable, they resort to eating laurel, and if they eat too much of it and nothing else, it will kill them).

I have no idea if that means it's toxic to caterpillars as well?
 
I don't think trout eat them.
 
I've been in the woods when the gypsy cats were so thick it sounded like it was raining on a clear cloudless day. "The poop is falling," Chicken Little
 
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