Don’t know about you, but I’m ambivalent about bugs. On the one hand, I spend an inordinate amount of time cursing aphids on the ninebark and honeysuckle. The same day, I can marvel at the beauty of a mayfly dun floating down the river, often into a trout’s sipping mouth. Bugs are the most diverse and numerous of all the Earth’s creatures. Entomologists have identified more than 1 million species and some estimate another 9 million are out there. Most of us would have no problem accepting that as fact when we try to see through them on the windshield or clean them off the bumper after a highway trip. Summers are when we are most exposed to them. Store shelves are full of products that would to keep them off our plants and us but we’re made increasingly aware that their use may not be healthy for us or the environment. Lately, I’ve seen the flip side, like the black beetle I flipped over because I read in the Bugs of Alberta book it was a good bug and figured it shouldn’t be on its back flapping its six feet. On the Crowsnest River last weekend, I helped Clive put on a fly fishing introduction clinic to about a dozen Nature Conservancy of Canada volunteers who had earlier been pulling noxious weeds at conservancy land upstream.
It’s tough to fly fish without bugs, or at least imitations of them. So before we got to the graceful casting, Clive scooped his bug net through Burmis Lake water and gathered the group around to identify the wiggling aquatic insects such as damselfly and dragonfly nymphs. At this stage, they are not only fish food, but they eat mosquito larvae. Good bugs. And, at the adult stage out of the water, damselflies show off their beautiful iridescent blue abdomens while the generally larger dragonflies cruise the summer air picking off other insects such as mosquitos. Down at the river, NCC intern Alissa kicked up rocks from the river bottom while Clive held the bug net (stitched by wife Willie that morning) to retrieve caddis and mayfly nymphs, among other assorted water wigglers to show the others. A couple of days later on another part of the Crow, Elwyn and I rigged fly rods with adult Stonefly imitations. Trout on the small side immediately teased us by flashing at our offerings. Some got hooked and were immediately released. But, catching fish was almost secondary to the show over and on the river. A stonefly’s flight pattern resembles a helicopter as it descends clumsily on to the water surface to lay eggs, then zooms skyward if a trout doesn’t swallow it, as one did about five meters downstream. Elwyn was later distracted by a couple of stoneflies getting plucked out of the air by a robin. Tough life. Then, the magnificent mayflies. Fly fishers get giddy when they’re on the river during a hatch of mayflies, recognizable in the air by their dipping flight and forked tails. On the water, they resemble delicate sailboats of various colours and sizes. They almost make bearable the pesky black flies that can buzz you to distraction or go swimming in your beer mug. |
