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> > Light Cahill?



Higherroad has attached this picture to aid in identification. The message is below.
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HigherroadMay 5th, 2014, 6:46 pm
Posts: 5I hope to ID this nymph. I believe it's Maccaffertium Ithaca Light Cahill. The size was about a #16. Photographed in April in SE USA.
EntomanMay 5th, 2014, 7:58 pm
Northern CA & ID

Posts: 2604		Hi Higherroad,

Welcome to the forum. That is a nymph from an intirely different family. It is an ephemerellid, probably in the genus Ephemerella.
"It's not that I find fishing so important, it's just that I find all other endeavors of Man equally unimportant... And not nearly as much fun!" Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman
HigherroadMay 5th, 2014, 8:39 pm
Posts: 5Then a Hendrickson or Sulphur perhaps? I've never seen sulphurs on this stream though.
WbranchMay 5th, 2014, 9:14 pm
York & Starlight PA

Posts: 2733		It is absolutely not a Hendrickson. If you Google "Hendrickson nymph images" or "Ephemerella subvaria images" you will get a hit with tons of high quality pictures of the insect in question.

Here is a link that shows color variations among two nymphs of the same genus. The light colored nymph of dorothea does resemble your nymph picture. However I'm not a bug guy, just an avid fly fisher, so I don't differentiate very astutely about how many tails or how their sex organs look under a microscope because the trout don't really care.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/882430/bgpage
Catskill fly fisher for fifty-five years.
EntomanMay 6th, 2014, 6:52 pm
Northern CA & ID

Posts: 2604		I think you're on the right track, Mack. Nice explanation about the synonymy.
"It's not that I find fishing so important, it's just that I find all other endeavors of Man equally unimportant... And not nearly as much fun!" Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman
EntomanMay 7th, 2014, 12:47 am
Northern CA & ID

Posts: 2604		Yeah, I was thinking about the possibility of the carolina form since synonymized with serrata. The prominent tubercles on the abdominal segs (particularly the ninth) and southern location got me to speculate, but the more I thought about it the more the idea seemed unlikely.
"It's not that I find fishing so important, it's just that I find all other endeavors of Man equally unimportant... And not nearly as much fun!" Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman
EntomanMay 7th, 2014, 9:59 am
Northern CA & ID

Posts: 2604		This isn't E. dorothea dorothea though. That species doesn't have tubercles projecting beyond the posterior edges of the abdominal segments.
"It's not that I find fishing so important, it's just that I find all other endeavors of Man equally unimportant... And not nearly as much fun!" Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman
CrepuscularMay 7th, 2014, 9:42 pm
Boiling Springs, PA

Posts: 923		I love these Ephemerellid threads!
EntomanMay 7th, 2014, 11:00 pm
Northern CA & ID

Posts: 2604		Me too!

BTW, it is a Sulfur Higherroad. If no other reason than it happens to be sulfur colored. ;) I can't imagine the dun being any other color from this nymph. The Sulfurs up in Spence's country are green (remember that one you posted a few years back that fooled me?). These ephemerellids are all over the color wheel, even in the same species.
"It's not that I find fishing so important, it's just that I find all other endeavors of Man equally unimportant... And not nearly as much fun!" Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Fisherman

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