well a first for me last weekend.
last weekend i was fishing a small rainbow lake which got a top up stocking in may. this apparently had the effect of encoraging some of the residents to feed on the surface with the newbies in the evenings.
anyway the word was very small sedges were what was on the menu so my friend and i settled in for some fun.
true to form as evening approached random rises appeared but initally i couldnt make out what they were taking.still a few nymphs were doing the job till the rise started proper.
to get to the point, said fishies were actually zeroing in on spent damsel flies and as the evening drew in the "residents" joined in.not having any imitaions on went a daddylong legs with a similar profile and needless to say the rest of the evening was very entertaining.
i have never seen fish (to the best my knowledge) targeting adult damsels before , admittedly most of my fishing is for brownies. does anyone know if this is common enough and do brownies have a taste for damsels too ?
thank
gardenolive

I once saw an amazing rise on adults during the day. It was during a drought. The heavans suddenly opened with a monsoon type downpour and within ten minutes stopped just as abruptly. For the next half hour every fish in the loch seemed to be up selectively smashing at damsels. Never seen it happen since.

Nice one G.O...I cant say Ive ever noticed spent damsels lying on the surface let alone seen trout feeding on them.Ive often seen brownies jumping out of the water at adult damsels in flight though ......and getting them....,usually in and around beds of horsetails.

I can't recall ever seeing a spent damsel on the water either. Don't the females crawl down plants to lay eggs? Not sure what happens to them afterwards. I'd always assumed they died on land as I believe the males must do.

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well guys ,
im sure the entomoligists amongst us will have a definative answer, but i pressumed it was the females trapped in the water film after laying eggs,could just as easily been the males.
the damsels were quite hard to spot in the water because the wings and upper thorax were the only visible part in the surface film on this occasion.the lower tail section was submerged making it an easy mistake to assume they were another type of fly.
as i was looking around me (not at my flies on the water of course) i remarked to my friend what they were and that there were quite a lot in the water as he had actually thought they were something else from a distance because of the fluttering wings.at the same time an obliging trout ate the one i had been watching....bad luck for the damsel, good luck for me

There are a lot of "spent Damsels" where I fish , not sure why they are dead on the water , is this just part of their life cycle ???

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Cheers Danny

Co-Founder of S.S.F.D 2010

Question ,

Blue Bodies or still greens ? I know there are 6 species in the UK and am not asking that one .

Best wishes

Steve P

In recent years I have seen both browns and rainbows feeding on adult damsel flies. They will hunt around marginal vegetation and leap clean out of the water to take them. I have also seen trout making bow waves as they chase adult damsels skimming over open water, although I have not witnessed such fish actually taking the adult. A couple of years ago I tied up an imitation of the adult damsel which met with some success. I didn't think much of the imitations which I bought and neither did the trout.

Mugsy

Hi all,
Spent a warm Sunday at my local fishery in Chirk, North Wales last weekend, it was marvellous to watch the damsels coming off in droves, coupling and back onto the water - but not a ripple! I could see the trout feasting on the damsel nymphs however no rises to the adult. Is this a normal occurrence or a one -off?

texxa, interesting that its a bit of a mini drought here for the last while.not much else bar some sillver sedge hatching out.
steve P. the males are blue banded females seem golden/tan in colour.

out of curiosity i went down again with my mate last night, he fished a blue damsel imitation dry (he tied for the job) i stuck with my daddy imitation.which fails in a big way when the naturals are about, but boy is it a good damsel .
as i said nothing obvious on the water and the fishing was slower than before.but the fish still came from nowhere to take the daddy off the top, i tried other dries to see if they would get any offers but nothing. my mates blue daddy didnt get an offer but when i gave him my fly to try on a dropper beside it the fish chose it.
the lake is a small but deep white marl lake with only a few reed beds which are now mostly in to shallow for the trout to access with the lower waterlevels.
the fish really werent interested in much else last night tried some buzzers/nymphs/emergers and other dries and except for induced takes no interest.
its been a fun diversion but think i'll go see what the brownies are up to next, come to think of it i know a few bays that have plenty of damsels
tight lines all.