Latest updates, page 27

I've added a new feature article to the site, a pair of fly fishing stories written by my late Great Uncle, Joseph Drasler, along with a brief introduction to this remarkable man.

Growing up chasing farm pond bass in northern Missouri, I never saw a trout until about age twelve, when Uncle Joe took my family on a tour of Rocky Mountain National Park and we stopped briefly to stare into a crystal-clear spring creek as a couple of lively twelve-inchers dashed for cover. Maybe that was the beginning of the grip trout streams have on my imagination.

My wife and I spent (Spent: The wing position of many aquatic insects when they fall on the water after mating. The wings of both sides lay flat on the water. The word may be used to describe insects with their wings in that position, as well as the position itself.) a weekend out at Chena Hot Springs, which included doing a loop on a nearby ski trail that runs up nearby Mammoth Creek, a tributary of the Chena River. I don't know if anyone ever fishes Mammoth Creek itself, but it has been the locale of some studies of local aquatic insects.

I was recently asked about good reading on the topic of aquatic insects in Alaska. I did some recent searches on this topic for work, and here's what I've found (thanks to Luke Jacobus for pointing me to more than a few of these).

The most recent species-specific source on mayflies is:

Randolph RP, McCafferty WP (2005) The mayflies (Ephemeroptera) of Alaska, including a new species of Heptageniidae. Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 107, 190–199.

A comprehensive source to family-level distribution and abundance is:

Oswood MW (1989) Community structure of benthic invertebrates in interior Alaskan (USA) streams and rivers. (ed) High Latitude Limnology. Springer, pp 97–110

And here's a mixed bag of other papers including some interesting biology related to Alaska's cold climate:

Rinella DJ, Bogan DL, Shaftel RS, Merrigan D (2012) New aquatic insect (Ephemeroptera, Trichoptera, and Plecoptera) records for Alaska, U.S.A.: range extensions and a comment on under-sampled habitats. Pan-Pacific Entomologist 88, 407–412.


Walters KR, Sformo T, Barnes BM, Duman JG (2009) Freeze tolerance in an arctic Alaska stonefly. J Exp Biol 212, 305–312.


Irons III JG, Miller LK, Oswood MW (1993) Ecological adaptations of aquatic macroinvertebrates to overwintering in interior Alaska (USA) subarctic streams. Canadian Journal of Zoology 71, 98–108.


Irons III JG (1988) Life history (Life history: The detailed life cycle of an organism, including the stages it passes through and characteristic behavior relating to growth and reproduction.) patterns and trophic ecology of Trichoptera in two Alaskan (USA) subarctic streams. Canadian journal of zoology 66, 1258–1265.


Cowan CA, Oswood MW, Buttimore CA, Flanagan PW (1983) Processing and macroinvertebrate colonization of detritus (Detritus: Small, loose pieces of decaying organic matter underwater.) in an Alaskan subarctic stream. Ecography 6, 340–348.

As for fishable hatches, the only hatch anybody's likely to have to match here in interior Alaska is Drunella doddsii. I've also encountered grayling feeding ravenously on a species of Cinygmula that I think might be Cinygmula ramaleyi, but that's yet to be confirmed by entomologists and would represent a new record in this state if it's the case. Ephemerella aurivillii is another of the common mayflies around here, along with various unidentified (at least by me) members of Baetidae, Siphlonuridae, and Epeorus. But I haven't personally seen any of those in fishable numbers.

A week ago I returned from a hike-in, float-out, solo caribou hunt in the Arctic. I've posted the whole story in sections, but here are a few previews of the spectacular scenery.