A Bug's Life

I would have loved this movie as a kid!

I've always been fascinated with insects. Like most young boys, capturing insects was an activity that was stimulated by our curiosity of our world. Fly fishing and fly tying still stimulates the same type of curiosity I felt when I was " knee high to a grasshopper "! When fishing for trout, I am always curious to see what trout eat. Before my switch to nearly total catch and release fishing, as a youngster I would nearly always look at a trout's stomach contents. I am still very curious to see what trout eat. These day's I resort to the use of a stomach pump ( I use it very sparingly as I do not know how harmful it is to the trout ).

Recently, I used the stomach pump to determine what these rather picky trout were eating. 

These fish that were rising, seemed to be feeding on a lot of insects ( midges, aka chironomids ) that were hatching, that is it seemed as if they were taking  a lot of the adult midges. Upon looking at the above stomach pump sampling which only included one adult stage midge, nearly all of the midges they ate were the pupa ( emerging ) stage.

The one adult in the stomach sampling.

The pupa were between as size 18 and a size 20 ( 6 mm long )short shank pupa hook.