Book |
Focus |
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American Stoneflies: A Photographic Guide to
the Plecoptera by Bill Stark, Stan Szczytko, and Riley Nelson, is an
extremely comprehensive fly fisherman’s reference on stoneflies, both nymphal and
adult, and its color photography is truly remarkable. |
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An Angler’s Guide to Aquatic Insects
And Their Imitations by Rick Hafele and Scott Roederer, illustrated by
Richard Bunse, is an excellent starter book on aquatic entomology. It is packed with
information, has effective keys for identification to family level for both larval and
adult life stages, and is compact enough to be conveniently taken into the field. |
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An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects Of
North America, edited by R. W. Merritt and K. W. Cummins, contains very
scientific language in support of identifying aquatic insects down to the genus
level. It is extremely thorough with regard to illustrations, and perhaps targeted
more toward entomologists that flyfishers. |
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Aquatic Entomology: The Fishermens Guide and
Ecologists Illustrated Guide to Insects and Their Relatives by W. Patrick
McCafferty, illustrated by Arwin Provonsha, is unquestionably the most complete and
highest quality book on general aquatic entomology. It is used as a college level text,
and is an outstanding reference, particularly for those interested in getting more than
ankle-deep in the subject. |
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Aquatic Insects of California
edited by Robert L. Usinger, although no longer published, includes keys to
most North American aquatic and semi-aquatic insect genera and to most California species.
However, since its publication in
1956 there have been many changes in taxonomic placement.
See taxonomic updates for this book by
clicking
here. |
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Caddis Super Hatches by Carl Richards and Bob Brandle
is an attractive book, and is especially useful for those aspiring to fish the caddisfly hatches.
It nicely covers caddisfly life cycles, fishing strategy,
contains illustrated patterns, tying instructions, identification keys, and
even has individual charts for (Eastern, Midwestern, Western, Appalachian
South, Pacific Northwestern) hatches. |
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Caddisflies by Gary
LaFontaine
is the definitive fly fisherman’s reference on caddisflies. See taxonomic updates for this book by
clicking
here. |
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Guide to
Aquatic Invertebrates of the Upper Midwest by R.W. Bouchard,
Jr. This identification manual is targeted at students, citizen
monitors, and aquatic resource professionals. Extremely well written, it includes
illustrations of most aquatic invertebrate orders likely to be encountered in
freshwater environments. Larvae of aquatic insect orders are
keyed/illustrated to family level. This is a great find for flyfishers
interested in entomology, as it is currently available for
free download. |
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Hatch Guide For Upper
Midwest
Streams by Ann R. Miller is efficiently organized, incredibly
comprehensive, and has stunning photographs of both immature and winged life stages of mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies, other
aquatic insects, and
crustaceans. It also has both photos and recipes for patterns tied to
imitate them. In its 2nd printing after only 3 years, it's a must-have hatch guide
for stream fly fishers in the Upper Midwest. |
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Hatch Guide For Western
Streams by Jim Schollmeyer offers a color photo of each covered
insect life stage on the left page, and three effective imitations on the
right page. Any western flyfisher wishing to match immature and/or
adult aquatic insects would benefit from use of this book. |
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Hatches II by Al
Caucci &
Bob Nastasi focuses on mayfly hatches of North American trout streams, provides
identification keys down to the genus level, and includes extraordinary color photographic
plates of nymphs, duns, and spinners. See taxonomic updates for this book by
clicking here. |
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Mayflies by Ted Fauceglia offers
incredibly beautiful color photos of the nymph, male dun, female dun, male
spinner, and female spinner of most popular eastern mayflies, as well as
photos and tying recipes for their imitations. |
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Mayflies, An Angler’s Study of Trout
Water Ephemeroptera by Malcolm Knopp and Robert Cormier is a really
excellent entomology reference on mayflies. It provides a simple and effective
system for identification of nymphs and adults, has good line drawings, and even
provides phonetic pronunciation for scientific names. See taxonomic updates
for this book by clicking
here. |
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Mayflies of
Michigan Trout Streams by Justin W.
Leonard and Fannie A. Leonard has
extremely detailed (species level) illustrations of nymphs, wing venation, and genitalia.
Although published in 1962, it remains in print. See taxonomic updates
for this book by clicking here. |
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Mayflies the Angler and the Trout
by Fred L. Arbona, Jr. contains extremely comprehensive information on mayflies,
with nymph, dun, and spinner keys to the species level. See taxonomic updates
for this book by clicking here. |
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McClane's New Standard Fishing Encyclopedia by A. J. McClane
contains rather comprehensive illustrated sections on identification of
mayflies (pp. 597-619) and stoneflies (pp. 961-977).
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Nymphs
by Ernest Schwiebert includes extremely detailed descriptions of nymphal
forms, beautifully detailed illustration, and an extremely captivating
writing style.
See
taxonomic updates for this book by clicking here. |
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Nymphs
Volume I: The Mayflies
by Ernest Schwiebert is the 1st book of a 2-volume edition, which was
completely re-written immediately prior to the author's untimely passing.
Erik Schwiebert took over the enormous task of making sure father's last
great work was published, so it could be shared with us. |
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Nymphs
Volume II: Stoneflies, Caddisflies, and other Important Insects: including
the lesser mayflies by Ernest Schwiebert is the 2nd book of a
2-volume edition. |
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Selective Trout
by Doug Swisher and Carl Richards has a chapter titled The Identification of Mayflies,
which has good genera level nymphal illustrations, and detailed species information
tables. See taxonomic updates for this book by clicking here.
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Stoneflies
by Carl Richards, Doug Swisher, and Fred Arbona, Jr. provides an extremely
thorough treatment of stoneflies from the flyfishing perspective. It
includes illustrated keys to family, regional hatch charts,
patterns for imitation, tactics for their use, and distribution by species. See taxonomic updates for this book by clicking
here. |
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STREAM BUGS AS
BIOMONITORS - Guide to Pacific Northwest Macroinvertebrate Monitoring and Identification
by Jeff Adams with Mace Vaughan and Scott Hoffman Black - The Xerces Society. |
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The Biology Of Mayflies by James G. Needham,
Jay R. Traver, and Yin-Chi Hsu is the classic study of mayflies in general,
and all (505) species of N. American mayflies known at date (1935) of
publication. It describes each species, and frequently has one or more
illustrations useful for their identification in conjunction with
dichotomous keys and verification tables. See taxonomic updates for
this book by clicking
here. |
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The Complete Book Of Western Hatches:
An Anglers Entomology and Fly Pattern Field Guide by Rick Hafele and
Dave Hughes is another excellent starter book on aquatic entomology. |
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The Caddisfly Handbook by Dick
Pobst and Carl Richards is a handy pocket guide, which is organized by Trout
Lake Caddis, Major Hatches East Of The Mississippi, and Hatches East Of The
Mississippi.
See taxonomic updates for this book by clicking
here. |
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The Hatches Made Simple by
Charles R. Meck presents a well thought out method for predicting hatches based on
time of day and season of year. The book contains extensive hatch timing
tables including common and scientific names, recommendation for pattern
style, body color, and hook size, etc. See taxonomic updates for
this book by clicking
here. |
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The Mayflies, or Ephemeroptera, of Illinois by
B. D. Burks is worth having for its mayfly illustrations, alone. As it
was first published in May 1953, its taxonomy is extremely dated.
However, one can download a free pdf of the entire book
by clicking
here.See taxonomic updates for
this book by clicking
here. |
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The Mayfly Guide: Quick and easy steps to identifying nymphs, duns, and spinners by Al Caucci
is a compact spiral-bound pocket guide to the North American mayflies of
most interest to fly fishers. The photos in the index, which are grouped by nymphs and duns/spinners, is particularly handy
for purpose of visual identification. |
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The Mayflies Of Florida
by Lewis Berner and Manuel L. Pescador provides identification keys, nymphal
and adult illustrations, and discussion of each the mayfly species known in
Florida at the time of the book's (1988) publication.
See taxonomic updates for this book by clicking
here. |
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Western Mayfly Hatches: From
the Rockies To The Pacific by Rick Hafele and Dave Hughes combines western
mayfly entomology and imitative patterns in beautifully crafted style. Recently
published, it establishes a new benchmark for flyfishing entomology authors. |