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Cranefly (Tipula spp.)
Other, hatching June–July, active in water between 40 and 65°F, and imitated at #6–10. Recorded from southeast Minnesota, where 99 Minnesota rivers on this site carry a page.
- #6–10Hook size
- 40–65°FWater, active
- Jun–JulPeak months
- 3Life stages fished
What it is
Other · Tipula spp. · larva → pupa → adult
The larva is a fat, legless, olive-grey grub, an inch or more long, living in bank margins and silt. The adult looks like an oversized mosquito and is a poor swimmer and a worse flier.
A big pale grub that washes out of undercut banks in high water. Worth a swing after rain.
When it hatches
These are Minnesota's own dates, not this site's shared calendar. They are the Craneflies (Tipulidae) row of Hatch Chart for Southeast Minnesota Trout Streams, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Lanesboro Area Fisheries (Vaughn Snook, Assistant Fisheries Supervisor), as of 15 June 2016. The chart's calendar runs January to October and makes no claim about November or December. Its own footer says it is a general time frame, that some streams have only a few of these hatches, and that others may see hatches it does not list.
Peak is June–July. 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.
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.
Active from 40°F to 65°F. On this map that is cold, cold-transitional, cool 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 |
|---|---|
| larva | The one that matters. High water washes them out of the banks in numbers, and a big, soft, olive grub bounced along the bottom is a serious early-season fly. |
| pupa | Present in the drift and taken by trout; this file carries no separate description of the stage. |
| adult | Long-legged and awkward, blown onto the water on summer evenings. Occasionally worth a skated dry on small water. |
Matching flies
6 patterns in this book imitate the Cranefly, 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.
- Adult Cranefly dry fly · #10–16 — Long trailing legs, sparse hackle, skittered rather than drifted. Autumn and spring evenings on the bank side.
- Cranefly Larva nymph · #6–10 — A fat pale grub. Best in the day or two after high water.
- Mop Fly nymph · #10–14 — Divisive and effective. Suggests a cranefly larva more than anybody wants to admit.
- Pat's Rubber Legs nymph · #4–10 — Ugly, heavy, and the single best searching nymph in high or coloured water.
- Walt's Worm nymph · #12–18 — Dubbing on a hook. Suggests cranefly larvae, sowbugs and everything else pale and wriggling.
- Woolly Bugger (Olive) streamer · #2–12 — The clear-water version. Smaller and lighter than you think you need.
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.
- Badger Creek southeast Minnesota
- Bear Creek southeast Minnesota
- Bear Creek southeast Minnesota
- Beaver Creek southeast Minnesota
- Beaver Creek southeast Minnesota
- Beaver Creek East southeast Minnesota
- Beaver Creek West southeast Minnesota
- Bee Creek southeast Minnesota
- Big Springs Creek southeast Minnesota
- Big Trout Creek southeast Minnesota
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
- southeast Minnesota MN
Rivers in these regions with a page here
- Badger Creek
- Bear Creek
- Bear Creek
- Beaver Creek
- Beaver Creek
- Beaver Creek East
- Beaver Creek West
- Bee Creek
- Belle Creek
- Big Springs Creek
- Big Trout Creek
- Bridge Creek
- Butterfield Creek
- Camp Creek
- Campbell Creek
- Canfield Creek
- Carson Creek
- Cedar Creek
- Clear Creek
- Cold Creek
- Corey Creek
- Crooked Creek
- Crow Spring
- Crystal Creek
- and 75 more
Related hatches
Same family, or overlapping this one's calendar on the same water.
- Water Boatman Corixidae · Other · September–November
- Alderfly Sialis spp. · Other · May–June
- Fish Eggs Other · Other · October–January and April
- Aquatic Worm Oligochaeta · Other · all year
- Damselfly Zygoptera · Other · all year