Dragonflies

Mayflies

Caddisflies

Stoneflies

Scientific Name

Match	Scientific Name
	Odonata-Anisoptera

Dragonfly adults are very rarely vulnerable to trout because they are superb at flight, but their large, slow nymphs are welcome food. The adults and nymphs are both impressive predators upon other insects, and I have watched adult dragonflies kill large mayfly duns and tear through a cloud of midges at rate of several per second.

This common name refers to only one order.

Insect Order Odonata-Anisoptera

These are pretty much always called Dragonflies.

Dragonflies and damselflies are in the same order, Odonata, but they are taxonomically separated on an obscure level not built into this site, the suborder. Dragonflies are in the rarely mentioned suborder Epiprocta, and within that suborder is the infraorder Anisoptera, the scientific name by which they're best known. None of that will help you catch trout, but it explains what the hyphen in this page's name is all about.

Cordulegaster Dragonfly Nymph

View 4 PicturesThis is a realy big, dark dragonfly nymph. Notice how "fuzzy" it is--it's covered with small hairs that collect sediment and debris and camouflage the nymph to match its natural surroundings. The greenish cast in some of the photos of this specimen is due to strange lighting during my first night photographing things for this site.

Collected January 13, 2004 from in
Added to Troutnut.com by on January 25, 2006

Libellulidae Dragonfly Adult

View 3 PicturesThis specimen of Libella saturata, the flame skimmer dragonfly, is the only invertebrate in this site's collection that I caught by hook and line. It swooped down and attacked my dry fly on the Firehole River, where it lived as a nymph in the hot water near the geothermal springs and geyser runoff.

Collected August 11, 2018 from in
Added to Troutnut.com by on June 12, 2019

See 10 more specimens...

Jargon Defined:

Duns: Mayflies have two adult stages. They first emerge from the water as duns (scientifically known as the subimago stage). They then molt into the spinner (imago) stage, in which they mate and die. Sometimes the word "dun" is confusingly used to refer to a brownish gray color in fly tying materials.

Natural: A natural is a real insect (or similar creature) a trout might eat. The term is used to specify the real thing as opposed to its artificial imitation.

Nymphs: The juvenile, underwater stages of mayflies, stoneflies, dragonflies, and damselflies and other aquatic insects whose juvenile stages are covered by hard exoskeletons. The word can also refer to the fishing flies which imitate these creatures, in which case it is used as a blanket term for flies imitating any underwater stage of an invertebrate (except for crayfish and leeches).