Fish Camp's Entomology Course: Insect Life Cycle

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Maggie Heumann of Trout Unlimited helps us understand how the aquatic insect life cycle and the different variables that affect when they emerge.

Fish Camp’s Entomology course makes entomology approachable and fun, showing how understanding aquatic insects can help you catch more fish. Maggie breaks down the fascinating world of entomology—the study of insects—and explains why understanding aquatic insects is essential for fly fishing success.

You'll learn what makes an insect an insect, how their unique life cycles and adaptations influence fish behavior, and how this knowledge can help you better match your flies to what fish are naturally feeding on. Covering everything from basic insect anatomy to the key aquatic species important to anglers, this course will give you a solid foundation to read the water more effectively, choose the right fly patterns, and ultimately catch more fish. Whether you're new to fly fishing or looking to deepen your understanding of the bugs trout eat, this course will make entomology approachable, fun, and directly applicable on the water.

Maggie is a passionate entomologist and conservation advocate, and she turned a childhood love of insects into a career focused on protecting wild places.

Now based in Idaho and working with Trout Unlimited, she champions balanced stewardship to ensure future generations—like her two daughters—can experience the natural world as she has.

For more content like this, head over to fishcamp.life to subscribe!

Truncated transcript: 

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:14: So one thing that's also important to note about the life cycle of insects is how many times do they emerge a year? We have several species that have the ability to speed their lifecycle up based on water temperature and air temperature, and emerge many times throughout the year. Typically, that's going to be in your summertime or your warmer months.

00:00:29:14 - 00:00:47:21: It's not going to be in the middle of the winter, although there are some insects that we aquatic insects that we do have that emerge in the winter. They're not going to be as important in fly fishing, but the way we classify that is called voltinism. And that's, how many again, how many life cycles that they have within the year.

00:00:47:23 - 00:01:09:04: And so uni-volting would mean that there's one emergence throughout the years. So something like a green drake hatch or brown drake hatch. That would be something with one big emergence per year. So we would call that universal team something that's bi-volting would have two emergences per year. So we have a couple of different insects that can do that...