Shooting swans from my verandah

 It's six below freezing. It's snowing fluffs quietly, like in slow motion, creating funny hats on winter jutters. There's almost ten centimeters powder on the ground. Dark water engulfs quietly fluffy flakes while flowing slowly towards Puula lake.
Silent cackle, like talking, carries from upstream. Suddenly there is a Whooper Swan family in front of me. Parents and four overgrown "ugly ducklings". They are sailing slowly downstream feeding on weed at the same time. How big they are this close. I shoot my camera few times. At he same time the parents awake about my presence. The silent noise from my camera sounds probably beyond fifteen meters. With high necks peeking behind their back the group paddles majestically further. Later, just before the shimmer of the blue moment fades away they came to sleep on the ice cover of Pölhö island in front of the hut. What a wonderful day this was.

February Red Fly

Do you know how February Red nymph spends its time? It eats and grows of course. While growing it exuviates its skin time to time. That is why some of the nymphs are dark and some are light in brown colour. Nymphs that have recently exuviated their skin are light brown. When time elapses the chitin case turns darker. When the time of maturation is getting closer, the nymphs start to migrate towards decent solid emerging platforms.
In winter, the living ground of February Red nymphs is covered normally with ice.  Reeds and stalking grasses penetrate the ice cover there. With help of warming beams of the sun the ice melts first around reeds. The sun shines like the stars through those formed holes attracting strongly February Red nymphs. Towards those stars, these stonefly nymphs roam and finally find their way to our side of the ice cover. 
If there weren’t ice the brightness of the sky would be prevailing. In these circumstances there are no clear focal point for nymphs to be targeted. Then whatever reed, stalking grass, or other weed pointing upwards from the bottom is a potential way to emerging platform. If this way has dead end, in other words it doesn't reach the water surface the nymph has to find another way. Sometimes the nymph throws itself swimming. It tries that way to find another potential path upwards. The swimming action is like a lizard running on sand. When it exhausts it starts to sink motionlessly legs pointing out. It is sure that trout are following this action.
Several years ago I studied how trout reacted at February Red nymphs during this sinking period. All trout in aquarium fed on sinking February Red nymphs. Only the smallest trout had slight difficulties to swallow their prey. Sometimes they had throwing up actions while gulping these "leggy" nymphs.
I normally fish on two kinds of wet flies close to FR hatch. I have succeeded with standard black nymphs and flies like in the picture. This time I tied a bunch of these.

In March I go with these.

Lasakoski February Red in week 01/2012

I went to collect an insect sample with my kick net. I should have had my waders on, but this time I was wearing only my Muck Boots. I was abel to wade only some half meter from the shore. My intention was to study the insect life around sedge roots. Because of my lazyness I had to accept the limitation in wading I had.
Lasakoski is well known about its February Red hatch in March. That is why I had strong curiosity to find out if there were lurking stonefly nymphs.
I started to operate in lower Sauna Pool well abowe, but not far from the tongue of North Branch.  I really couldn't go far from the bank because of my boots and high water. From my foothold I tried to scrape sedge roots as well I could. From experience I knew the nymphs sholuld be there.
As result I got few lumps of sunken dead leaves and other debris, totally half of a bucket.
I depleted the bucket on a big plate ad started to sort out my catch. What a great catch it was. Normally this kind of qiuck sample produces some ten insects. Now there were dozens of tubed caddis larvas, triple times that of mayfly nymphs and totally fourty February Red nymphs. This promises very good February Red hatches in March, if nothing dramatic happens.

Brotherhood of February Red nymphs