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gene goss
12-06-2012, 11:00 AM
I'm looking for some info. on the beetles of Pyramid Lake?
I have never seen a beetle in the water at Pyramid Lake, the only beetle i seen was at the Reno fly shop, they had one in a jar to look at.
I found this info. on Predaceous diving beetle.... http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/474473/predaceous-diving-beetle

Darian
12-06-2012, 07:35 PM
Interesting description. They're large too (up to 1.4" in length). Not sure if there're any beetles in Pyramid lake either. I've never seen any but that doesn't mean much of anything. I've always wondered whether there were any aquatic snails up there. aside from the alkaline water, there's plenty of places where they could thrive. :confused:

Other than the profile, few of the beetle fly patterns used up there resemble anything close to a beetle, snail or pollywog.

Troutstalker55B
12-06-2012, 08:12 PM
Gene,

I know very little when it comes to the bugs at Pyramid, as you may remember I chose to pursue my studies/fishing at Eagle Lake instead. The beetles of Eagle Lake are the Mormon Creeping Water Bug (family Naucoridae) shown below. Since both lakes were connected long ago by way of the ancient Lake Lahontan it could be the same beetle. The MCWBs at Eagle are very prolific and have been found in the bellies of the trout in both spring and fall. They are very hard to imitate as an artificial because of how thin they are. Their movement in the water is also very hard to copy as well, they swim in loops and turns all the while with a twitchy action. I've done best with smaller wiggle tails with a snub of a tail in peacock. I'm now interested in just what beetle exist at Pyramid!

http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/i424/moto55b/eaglelake123.jpg

JJ
12-08-2012, 09:13 PM
Gene,

I was fishing at Pyramid Lake and had a few beetles swim by my ladder. I put one on my stripping basket and took a couple of pictures. I hope that this helps you.

Jeff

Troutstalker55B
12-09-2012, 09:45 AM
JJ,

Thanks for sharing your pics. I think the specimens you found are the Green Stink Bug a non aquatic bug which leaves me scratching my head and thinking "blow in feed?" from the wind. Out of all the Pyramid lake experts on the board here I got to believe somebody has more data and pics on the subject. Anybody?

Bill Kiene semi-retired
12-09-2012, 10:20 AM
We have the full selection of Pyramid Lake fly patterns from Umpqua developed by the Reno Fly Shop at our fly shop now.

Darian
12-09-2012, 12:45 PM
Did a cursory search for info about aquatic bugs in Pyramid Lake. The only aquatic insects referred to were crustaceans and dragonflies....

Troutstalker55B
12-09-2012, 06:14 PM
Found this on the Creeping Mormon Water Bug at Pyramid Lake from the book "Fishes and Fisheries of Nevada". Lots of other cool info as well; http://books.google.com/books?id=oGa5ahY3EIcC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=creeping+mormon+water+bug+pyramid+lake&source=bl&ots=HPojORKD8L&sig=lrmxaw7z7wiRFYEYKVAtvdmRfGg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2zbFUP-7GsmiigKtwoDICA&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ

jayclarkflyfishing
12-10-2012, 09:30 AM
Here a a few pics of a beetle I found crawling around the rocks at Pelican last spring. The lake is filled with small bleached out snail shells and most of the beaches have these shells along the shore. I have witnessed the predacious diving beetle at Pyramid on many occasions and their coloring is more of a brownish tan. With all of that said, I don't believe the fish are "keying" in on a hatch as much as seeing something moving in their domain and attacking it. Apex predatory response kind of thing.

Jay

Troutstalker55B
12-10-2012, 03:17 PM
Here a a few pics of a beetle I found crawling around the rocks at Pelican last spring. The lake is filled with small bleached out snail shells and most of the beaches have these shells along the shore. I have witnessed the predacious diving beetle at Pyramid on many occasions and their coloring is more of a brownish tan. With all of that said, I don't believe the fish are "keying" in on a hatch as much as seeing something moving in their domain and attacking it. Apex predatory response kind of thing.

Jay

Thanks for your insight Jay!

gene goss
12-12-2012, 09:39 AM
I have to agree with you Jay i think the floating beetle is a fishing technique.....Suspended fly... fished from the bottom.

Kevin Goding
12-17-2012, 11:28 AM
Yeah most of the pics in the thread thus far aren't beetles or aquatic beetles. The first one is a naucoridae, which is a hemipteran, and yes the 2nd (I think 2nd) was a stinkbug. The last picture is a scarab beetle, and is terrestrial. I'm not sure if there are specific beetles of pyramid lake, but would assume it has a pretty generalized taxa list of similar lakes in the region. A lot of the aquatic beetles are probably in a size range you'd barely notice them. For a lake I would assume most of them would be in the families hydrophilidae and dytiscidae, and in low densities exept in spring/summer in areas with lots of weeds. The only places we see these things in high densities are ponds and rice fields really, where you have warmish water that supports a huge midge/mosquitoe larval population for these beetles to eat.

EricW
12-17-2012, 11:55 AM
Had the rare catch of a pulling up a big branch out there once. It was covered with clear white scuds about size 12. Two fat dragon fly nymphs were going to town on them. I've got to think that most beetles that are fished are taken for the dragon flies, especially when pulled with short strips, or maybe just random food opportunities like Jay said. Only swimming beetles I've seen have been smaller not counting all the weird bugs that get blown in.

bigfly
12-26-2012, 03:29 PM
One day, making cast after cast, stripping, stripping ect.....
In a fifteen minute period, I snagged three dragon fly nymphs.
You do the math, must be thousands down there...... They migrate toward shore during a short period in the Spring.
Anyway, I didn't have one in my box.
So I wandered up to the truck to tie one up....
It was THE silver bullet.
Always take the tying stuff......
Match that hatch baby.....
I'll dig around and see if I can find the sample vile with the bug.
The fly was basically the pyramid beetle, larger and with rubberleggs.
They are dorsally flattened, ambush predators, able to eat small fry.
Far as I know they do not swim.

The other match the hatch moment out there, was lady bug beetles.
Better have one just in case you see fish rising in the spring....
It was fun fishing a dry fly to the cutties.
Good thing I had the tying stuff for that one as well.
I had a banner day, where most others went fishless.
Makes me think that the do follow food cycles a little.....
I have also fished a scud and a snail pattern out there, but was not overly productive for me.


Jim

Tom Goodwin
12-29-2012, 01:44 AM
Here's a few photos of some bugs I found/snagged a few years back. I think the first one is of a dragonfly nymph bigfly mentioned.

60206021

Troutstalker55B
12-29-2012, 07:34 AM
Tom,

Thanks for the pictures! The dragonfly nymph is of the Darner species with a longer body and a big head and they favor weeds for habitat. The other species of dragonfly in there would be a Skimmer, which has much shorter spider like body. They like rocky / sandy habitat.

I'm stoked you have a picture of a Mormon creeping water bug that I mentioned earlier in this post. I knew they had to be in there. That is one cool bug.

bigfly
12-31-2012, 01:14 PM
Jon's on it.
Desert lakes have a barren bottom to a large extent.
So nymphs evolved to flatten out and hide on the bottom.
As opposed to creeping through vegetation.
Reminded me of a crab, legs to the side more than underneath.
They are still, the great white (if you will) of the underwater bug world.

Jim

gene goss
01-03-2013, 03:32 PM
I was looking for some info. on a floating dragonflie fly and ran across a couple of web. sites.
http://www.danblanton.com/blog/category/hot-flies/jay-spensers-floating-dragon/
http://www.riseformflyfishing.com/dragonflies.htm