FIND THE FOOD The redear sunfish are know to eat snails and crawdads and can be their prey for most of the year. However, in the spring, when I do my redear fishing, the redear are up shallow and I feel prefer some of the great morsals, like the dragonfly emergent, available at this time. The more you know about what redear eat at your fishing hole will only help you hunt down the redear in your waters. It is my belief that some of the big redear that I catch in the spring are not spawning but instead are up shallow feeding on these emerging insects.
THE DRAGONFLY NYMPH
Common green darner aquatic nymph. Douglas Mills, Creative Commons License 2.0.
Dragonflies are hemimetabolous bugs;night. It remains stationary with its head out of
with no pupal stage they go through a fragment- the water, while its respiration system adapts to ed transformation with a progression of nymph- breathing air, then climbs up an emergent plant al stages. Eggs laid inside plant tissues are nor- or wood, and molts. While most anglers will tell you that redear feed down on the bottom this mally molded like grains of rice. A dragonfly can lay up to 1500 eggs. They require about sev-might be a time when you could get a few with en days to hatch. These nymphs will shed their a fly on top with an emerging dragonfly pattern. The emerging dragonfly attaches itself exoskeleton multiple times as they grow. Most of a dragonfly’s life is spent at this stage and are firmly in a vertical position with its claws as vulnerable to fish and other predators. This is its exoskeleton begins to split at a weak spot especially good to know for the redear angler. behind the head. Like the photo shown in this The dragonfly nymph extends its mouth article dragonflies love to emerge within stake beds that protrude the water’s surface, keep this that is folded under, to capture its prey. The in mind. The dragonfly crawls out of its exodragonfly nymph can catch insect larvae and even small fish to eat. The dragonfly can remain skeleton and arches backwards. This allows its exoskeleton to harden. Curling back upwards, in the nymph stage for as long as five years, and smaller species lasts between two months it completes its emergence, swallowing air and pumping hemolymph (a fluid equivalent to and three years. When the nymph is ready to blood) into its wings. This causes them to exmetamorphose into an adult, it stops feeding and makes its way to the surface, generally at pand to their full extent. 10 - RAMBLING ANGLER OUTDOORS
