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Little Yellow Sally (Isoperla spp.)
Stonefly, hatching May–July, active in water between 55 and 68°F, and imitated at #14–16. Recorded from southeast Minnesota, where 99 Minnesota rivers on this site carry a page.
- #14–16Hook size
- 55–68°FWater, active
- May–JulPeak months
- 2Life stages fished
What it is
Stonefly · Isoperla spp. · nymph → adult
The Yellow Sally: a bright yellow-green stonefly, size 14 to 16, common on summer evenings in broken water and impossible to mistake for anything else.
Bright yellow, fluttering along the bank on summer evenings. Fish rarely refuse a small yellow attractor while it is on.
When it hatches
These are Minnesota's own dates, not this site's shared calendar. They are the Medium Brown Stonefly (Isoperla sp.) and Yellow Sally Stonefly (Alloperla sp.) 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 May–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 55°F to 68°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 |
|---|---|
| nymph | Slim, amber-brown, in riffle gravel. Fished on the bottom through the summer. |
| adult | Sulphur-yellow, held flat over the back. Egg-laying females skitter at dusk and fish take them with a splash. |
Matching flies
5 patterns in this book imitate the Little Yellow Sally, 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.
- Pheasant Tail Nymph nymph · #12–22 — The mayfly nymph. Beadhead or not, size 16, and half the trout in the world have eaten one.
- Prince Nymph nymph · #10–18 — An attractor nymph with biot wings. Nobody agrees what it imitates and it does not matter.
- Stimulator dry fly · #8–16 — Attractor and stonefly both. Floats a dropper better than almost anything.
- Yellow Sally dry fly · #14–16 — Bright yellow, size 14, summer evenings along the bank.
- Yellow Sally Nymph nymph · #14–18 — Amber-yellow stonefly nymph. The naturals crawl to the bank to hatch, so it fishes best in close and shallow.
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.
- Golden Stonefly Acroneuria spp. · Stonefly · June–July
- Giant Black Stonefly (Salmonfly) Pteronarcys dorsata · Stonefly · May–June
- Little Brown Stonefly Taeniopteryx / Strophopteryx spp. · Stonefly · February–April
- Little Black Stonefly Allocapnia / Capnia spp. · Stonefly · January–April
- Little Sister Caddis Cheumatopsyche spp. · Caddis · June–August