Hafele’s Bug BlogIt was one of those unexpected events. An event that was set in motion nearly ten years ago when Dave Hughes and I were writing Western Mayfly Hatches and trying to update all the photos for the book. To borrow some cliches “timing is everything” and “location, location, location,” both fit when it comes to getting photos of all the different stages of specific species of insects. It can be a lot of fun, not unlike a scavenger hunt, but it can also be very time consuming and occasionally frustrating as hell.

As it happened our biggest frustration was trying to get a photo of the genus Leptophlebia. First of all Leptophlebia is not a very important mayfly in western waters. This genus goes by the common name Western Black Quill. The nymphs live in both streams and lakes. In streams they prefer the slowest water where aquatic plants grow and detritus accumulates. Occasionally they produce something of a major hatch, a British Columbia lake here or a slow stretch of the Yellowstone River there. But when it came to finding them for the photos we needed they seemed to disappear completely.  We looked for years, until we decided the bug God’s were not on our side and just gave up. If you look in Western Mayfly Hatches you’ll see that the chapter on Leptophlebia is the only chapter without dun and spinner photos.

Then in early April Dave and I, plus Dave’s wife Masako, were fishing on a small lake not far from our homes in Portland. The weather was sunny one moment, then cloudy, then a cold rain, then sunny again. A few tiny midges flew off the water and perhaps once every fifteen minutes or so a fish rose to something unseen, leaving us guessing it was for one of the tiny midges. The fishing was as unpredictable as the weather and as the afternoon progressed we started dragging a bug net across the pond’s bottom near shore to see what we might turn up. These “benthic” samples did nothing to enlighten or excite us as they contained a sparse number of the usual suspects - a few small scuds, tiny midge larvae, a dragon fly nymph or two, and a smattering of immature damselfly nymphs. We were expecting to see lots of Callibaetis, or speckle-winged quill nymphs, but none could be found. Based on that we decided we better give up on waiting for the Callibaetis hatch to start!

We had just started packing up when Dave saw a mayfly dun sitting on the water not far from our previous collecting spot. Just one. Dave let out a yell, “Hey, look, a Callibaetis.”. Nice. I grabbed the bug net and waded out a couple feet from shore to get a good close look at this lonely little mayfly. As soon as I got close I started doubting if it was indeed a Callibaetis. First it was too large for a Callibaetis, and the color didn’t seem quite right. Then I saw that it had three tails. Callibaetis duns always have just two tails, never three, so that clinched it.

I yelled back, “Dave, it’s not a Callibaetis.  I think it might be a Leptophlebia!” 

“No way,” replied Dave.

Now I had it in hand and was getting a good close look. The heavily veined  wings, olive-brown body, and three tails - what else could it be?  Fortunately I had my good camera and macro lens with me and after quickly getting it set up Dave and I began shooting photos at various angels and with different backgrounds. The weather cooperated, and even the dun cooperated posing for photos like America’s next super model. 

Later at home a look at it under the microscope confirmed without a doubt that after years and years of searching we had our photo of this large but elusive mayfly. Dave’s reply after I emailed him the final news was simply, “Why now!”