Yellow Sally
The Yellow Sally is the small, bright counterpart to the big summer stoneflies. Adults run a vivid lemon to yellow-green body, roughly half an inch long, with pale smoky wings that flash in flight.
Mother's Day Caddis
The Mother’s Day Caddis (Grannom) is the season’s first great caddis event: a late-April blizzard hatch that races the spring runoff on the Clark Fork, Rock Creek, and lower Madison.
Spotted Sedge
The Spotted Sedge is the caddis you mean when you say "caddis" without thinking about it: the summer workhorse and the most abundant, widely distributed caddis on Cameron’s home waters.
Caddis Flies
Caddis (order Trichoptera) are arguably the most important trout food after the mayflies. An overview of the three that matter on Cameron's home waters: the Spotted Sedge, the Mother's Day Caddis, and the October Caddis.
Sow Bug
Sow bugs are freshwater isopods — the aquatic cousins of the terrestrial pill bug or “roly-poly.” Like scuds, they’re crustaceans rather than insects, but they fish like nymphs: subsurface, year-round.
Scud
Scuds aren’t insects — they’re freshwater amphipod crustaceans, distantly related to ocean shrimp.
Midge
Midges are the year-round food source — the bug that keeps trout feeding through January and February when nothing else is hatching.
Crayfish
Crayfish are big-meal targets — when a trout (especially a brown trout) eats a crayfish, that’s a serious calorie haul.
Spruce Moth
The spruce moth is a mid-summer terrestrial event that some Western rivers see and others don’t — it depends on the conifer outbreak cycle.
Grasshopper (Hopper)
When summer hits its hottest stretch and aquatic hatches thin out, hoppers become the menu.
Ant
Ants are the second-most-important terrestrial after grasshoppers — and on small streams, in technical low-water conditions, or during a flying-ant swarm, they’re the more important of the two.
October Caddis
The October Caddis is the West’s biggest caddis hatch and one of the most important fall events for trout fishermen.
Skwala
The skwala is the Western fly fisher’s first true dry-fly hatch of the year.
Salmonfly
The salmonfly is the iconic Rocky Mountain hatch — a 2–3 inch dark stonefly whose emergence triggers some of the year’s most aggressive trout feeding.
Nemoura
Nemouras (and the nemourid family generally) are small dark stoneflies that emerge in early spring, often a few weeks ahead of the skwala.
Golden Stone
The golden stone is the salmonfly’s smaller cousin. Adults sport a yellow-tan to golden-amber body with darker wings, roughly 1 to 1.5 inches long.
Trico (Tricorythodes)
The Trico is one of the smallest hatchable mayflies, a black-bodied, white-winged miniature whose summer-morning emergence and spinner fall draw trout to the surface in clouds of feeding fish.
PMD (Pale Morning Dun)
The Pale Morning Dun is the dominant summer mayfly across the West.
March Brown
The March Brown is the second major mayfly hatch of the spring season, typically following BWOs and overlapping with skwalas.
Mahogany Dun
The Mahogany Dun is a small-to-medium fall mayfly with a deep reddish-brown body, color so distinctive it gives the species its common name.