Insects and other foods the trout should be eating:
1.    Little BWOs
2.    Green Sedges (Caddisflies)
3.    Cinnamon Caddis (Mostly Abrams Creek)
4.    Little Short Horned Sedges
5.    American March Browns
6.    Giant Stoneflies
7.    Light Cahills
8.    Little Yellow Stoneflies (Yellow Sally)
9.    Eastern Pale Evening Duns
10.  Sulphurs
11.  Slate Drakes
12.  Golden Stoneflies

Most available/ Other types of available food:
13.    Sculpin, Minnows (Streamers)
14.    Inch Worms

KISS A Bug Series - Inch Worms (Moths)

Back on the 21st of this month, after a "Short Notes" article, I preceded with the KISS series
on the mighty inchworm, or larva of the moth. I forgot to continue the article, so here it is.

A moth is a butterfly type fly in its adult stage of life but it isn't a butterfly. It is closely related.
They both are in the order Lepidopthera but only about ten percent of the order are
butterflies. Ninety percent are moths. Don't look for any new Perfect Fly patterns to imitate
the different species of moths. There are just over 140,000 species of them. In fact, there
are so many scientist don't know how many they are. How can you know what you don't
know. Only politicians are capable of that.

Actually, I started to create fly patterns for them all but when I got to the "Kiss of Deaths -
head Hawk Moth larva, I decided against it. I just swipped this from Wikipedia to show one of
the 140,000 species that, although I don't think I've ever seen one, I doubt I want to find one
crawling down up my lanyard to get in my shirt.

I googled moth larva and got things like - moth larva in carpet, moth larva in food, pantry
moths, moth balls, etc. I googled Smoky Mountain moth larvae
and got this website. How
about that. We are coming up in this World. Here's what I found and here's what I'm going to
run today so I can go fishing this afternoon:

Re-run from 2010:
Angie picked up two inch worms from the railing on our front porch yesterday
morning and placed them on my desk. She likes to aggravate me like that but that
was her way of reminding me the trees in our yard have the little green worms
(larvae) hanging from them. Although it isn't very far to one, there isn't a trout
stream running through the front yard but if there was, the inch worms would
be falling in the water rather than on our front porch.

The little green worms are moth larvae that  belong to the Geometridae Family of
insects. They got the name "inchworm" because they are about an inch long. When they
crawl, they curl up in a much shorter configuration and then stretch back
out. Maybe they crawl about an inch at a time. The little larvae are also called
spanworms, loopers, measuring worms, sour worms, and many other common
names. There are numerous species of them in Great Smoky Mountains National

Inchworms are not all green. They can be tan, brown or black. However, almost all
of them we have seen in the park were green with darker bottoms.

There's something else about them that I think is important in the Smokies. The
flies that imitate them look a lot like the larvae of the free living caddisflies called
Green Sedges. They are
Rhyacophila species and one of the few families of
caddisflies that can live and survive well in fast water. There are a lot of these
caddisflies, the larvae of which are called Rock Worms, in the streams of the

The inchworms also look much like the net-spinning caddisflies usually called
Cinnamon Sedges. These are not plentiful in the Smokies except for Abrams Creek
but there are some in all the streams in the park. When the larvae come out of their
shelters to eat, they suspend out in the current on a silk line and get food from their
nets. Trout are used to seeing them and the Rock Worms in all of the streams.

These worm-like larvae will suspend several inches from limbs on a silk thread they
produce. They do this hanging act when they are ready to pupate. It is common for
them to fall into the water. In fact, if they are suspended over the water, they
are going to fall into the water.

hanging from tree limbs,
especially during those times when a major hatch is not
underway, which is most of the time during the summer months. If you have not
seen any of them on the banks, it very unlikely there will be any in the water.

You will
find them throughout the Summer but heavy only at certain times.
Once the trout

There isn't a bad place to present one of the flies that imitate the inch worm. When
they fall off the trees, they don't have the opportunity to select the type of water
they fall in. If they could do that, they would select dry land rather than the water.
Copyright 2012 James Marsh