Cinnamon Flying Ant (Formicidae (alate))

Terrestrial, hatching August–September, active in water between 58 and 78°F, and imitated at #16–20. Recorded from the North Carolina mountains, where 1575 North Carolina rivers on this site carry a page.

This is the winged reproductive stage of common ants: rusty-cinnamon, pinched at the waist, with two pairs of clear wings. It arrives on the water in swarms on a specific warm, humid, still day in late summer and not at all the day before, which makes August and September the peak and makes the whole event unpredictable. The working band is 58 to 78 degrees, covering cold-transitional, cool and warm water, and imitations run size 16 to 20. The body is dense enough that surface tension does the work, so the natural floats in the film rather than on it. Trout take them with real confidence and refuse a fly riding too high, which is the single adjustment that matters. A Cinnamon Flying Ant in 16 to 20 is the direct match, with a Parachute Ant in 14 to 20 or a Griffith's Gnat in 18 to 24 standing in when the fall runs small.

#16–20Hook size
58–78°FWater, active
Aug–SepPeak months
1Life stage fished

Subbasins with trout water where it is on record: 16 of North Carolina's 46.

See North Carolina's trout water on the live map → Every reach coloured by water temperature — the water these hatches come off.

What it is

Terrestrial · Formicidae (alate) · adult

The winged reproductive stage of common ants, rusty-cinnamon in colour, with a pinched waist and two pairs of clear wings. It arrives on the water in swarms, on a specific warm and humid day in late summer, and not at all the day before.

A humid, still late-summer afternoon puts them on the water by the thousand. Unpredictable, and the best fishing of August when it happens.

When it hatches

Peak is August–September. The pale months either side are the shoulder — the app widens a peak by one month in each direction and recommends the bug there, and no further: that widening is bounded so that a bug peaking in May is never offered in August.

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peak shoulder not recommended

Water conditions

The band is a water temperature, not an air temperature, and it is the range in which this insect is worth fishing — for a mayfly that is the emergence window; for a scud or a midge it is simply the range trout will still eat one in.

58°F 78°F

Active from 58°F to 78°F. On this map that is cold-transitional, cool, warm water — the band crosses 2 of the three breaks the river colours use. Breaks at 58, 64 and 70°F.

Stages

What the insect is doing, and what that means for what you tie on.

Stage	What it is
adult	Floats in the film rather than on it — the body is dense and the surface tension does the work. Trout take them with confidence and refuse a fly riding too high.

Matching flies

3 patterns in this book imitate the Cinnamon Flying Ant, across its stages. Which one to tie on follows the stage the water temperature says it is in — the app makes that call on a live reading; this page lists the whole set.

Where to find it right now

The rivers with a page here that sit in this insect's regions, with a USGS gauge reporting water temperature. This list is re-ranked against the reading each gauge is sending now and today's date, so it is live — the fallback below it, if the readings do not arrive, is each river's measured July mean.

Regional presence

Regions, not collection records. This insect is recorded from the coarse regions below; nobody has surveyed which named river it has been caught on, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

northern lower Michigan MI
southern lower Michigan MI
the Upper Peninsula MI
the Wisconsin driftless WI
northern Wisconsin WI
the Virginia mountains VA
the North Carolina mountains NC

Rivers in these regions with a page here

Related hatches

Same family, or overlapping this one's calendar on the same water.

Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.