Golden Drake (Anthopotamus distinctus)

Mayfly, hatching July–August, active in water between 60 and 72°F, and imitated at #10–12. Recorded from northern lower Michigan, where 459 Michigan rivers on this site carry a page.

#10–12Hook size
60–72°FWater, active
Jul–AugPeak months
4Life stages fished

Subbasins with trout water where it is on record: 12 of Michigan's 59.

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

What it is

Mayfly · Anthopotamus distinctus · nymph → emerger → dun → spinner

Large and golden-amber through the body and wings, with three tails. Distinctive enough in the hand that it is rarely confused with anything, and rarely seen because it emerges after dark.

A large golden-amber summer mayfly of silty-margined freestone rivers, emerging after dark. Never a dense hatch, but big enough that a handful of duns will move fish that ignored everything smaller.

When it hatches

Peak is July–August. 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.

60°F 72°F

Active from 60°F to 72°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
nymph	A burrower in the silt of slower margins, present all year and almost never in the drift until emergence.
emerger	Comes up through the surface after dark in warm midsummer water.
dun	Big and pale amber. Never in numbers, but a handful of them will move fish that ignored everything smaller all evening.
spinner	Falls late, well after full dark, over riffles and the water just below them.

Matching flies

4 patterns in this book imitate the Golden Drake, 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
the Wisconsin driftless WI
the Virginia mountains VA
the North Carolina mountains NC
southeast Minnesota MN

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.