Psychoglypha bella snow sedge
This week’s crawly is one you can see year-round in our neck of the woods! Meet a beautiful caddisfly with a beautiful name – literally – the Psychoglypha bella snow sedge.
What’s in a name? Well, the “bella” confirms their beauty and the “snow” tells you they aren’t afraid of a little bit of Oregon winter. Their common name is “beautiful northern caddisfly.”
Winter anglers no doubt agree that they are beautiful, because they are one of a handful of “trout treats” on the wing in even the coldest months.
Bellas will hatch out into their winged form on sunny winter days, often in the same spots where trout hang out to take advantage of a brief visit from the sun. So using a nice faux snow sedge fly can help a chilly angler net a catch.
But wait, there’s more for anglers! Snow sedge (Genus Psychoglypha) larvae are also especially prone to behavioral drift, so you’ll also want to pack your tackle with a good faux sedge larvae lure.
Behavioral drift is when a large group of aquatic larvae release their grip on the river bottom and all drift downstream for a bit. This makes them vulnerable, and trout know this and chow down.
Most species drift at dusk or just before dawn, but snow sedges are day drifters.
Bellas are quite large as caddisflies go, topping out at one inch in length so you can see why trout love them in both their larval and adult form.
These big, beautiful sedges aren’t to be taken for granted. They can only be found down the West Coast and along the Rockies with small populations in Alaska, around the Great Lakes and in the Northeast.
There are only 57 recorded snow sedge sightings on iNaturalist, but don’t be discouraged. They love the Upper Rogue. I saw lots of them in my yard in Trail. I had to pick and choose just a few photos from 2014 to use in this column. We are quite spoiled when it comes to “concentration of snow sedge per person” here.
The adults are active at night, even in inclement weather, so you can find them around porch lights in the early morning. They do have really good dried leaf camo and exceptional dried ponderosa pine needle camo, so they can be hard to spot.
Snow sedges are in the Family Limnephilidae AKA northern caddisflies. They are casemaker caddis – specifically tube-casemakers. So if you see little critters covered in “sleeping bags” put together from leaves, stems, moss, bark, sand or pieces of snail shells, you are looking at a caddis larvae – maybe even a bella.
Fun fact: Even caddis kiddos within a single genus may make cases that look quite different from each other, so there’s no way to identify a caddis species by case alone. They’re artistic that way, and they also have to make their cases from the materials available to them wherever they happen to hatch.
Snow sedge larvae are little beneficial stream buddies. In addition to being a food source for trout and other aquatic animals and even birds, they help keep our waters clean by dining on algae and even decaying animal matter.
Gorgeous, unique and beneficial, there’s so much to love about our beautiful bellas!