Damselfly
Also called Damsel, Damselfly nymph
A damselfly is an odonate insect whose juvenile stage lives in water and is a common food source for trout, bass, and panfish, especially in lakes and slow water.
- Group
- Aquatic insects
- Category
- Entomology & forage
- Level
- Intermediate
- Water
- Freshwater
Last updated
What Damselfly means
Damselflies show up in a wide range of freshwater habitats, including stillwaters, slow edges, and streams. The immature stage is a slender nymph that swims with a side-to-side wiggle and often hangs in vegetation.
Adults are the thin-bodied, long-winged insects you see around shorelines. They lay eggs on or in aquatic plants, and the nymphs live in the water until they crawl out to transform. In fly fishing terms, “damselfly” commonly means matching either the nymph with a small streamer-style retrieve or suspending it around weed beds, or the adult with a floating pattern.
Why it matters on the water
If you recognize damselfly nymphs, you start paying attention to weed lines, pockets in the weeds, and the shallows the nymphs swim toward when they migrate to shore to emerge.
Damselfly nymphs also change how you move the fly. A slow hand-twist or short strips with pauses matches the way they swim and stall in vegetation, and it often out-fishes a dead drift in lakes and ponds.
Read next
- DragonflyA dragonfly is a large predatory insect. Trout and bass eat the underwater nymph stage, and bass sometimes take the adults.
- MayflyA mayfly is a freshwater insect with aquatic nymph stages that trout and other fish eat in every stage of its life cycle, from nymph to dun to spinner.
- NymphA nymph is a subsurface fly meant to imitate an aquatic insect in its immature stage, or a small food item drifting in the current. Nymphs are fished with or without weight, an indicator, or tight-line methods.
- StreamerA streamer is a fly meant to be moved to imitate a baitfish, leech, sculpin, or crayfish. It is often fished with strips, swings, or a steady retrieve, but it can also be dead-drifted.