I like to fish for trout and trout like to eat bugs.
I don't know enough about bugs, so I took two wooden dowels about 4 feet long and stapled a section of nylon window screen between them.
I figured with my seine net I could catch and hopefully identify the larvae of insects and that would help me in my quest for trout.
For the hell of it I decided to sample a vernal pool (not a place you would find trout). A vernal pool is a depression in the ground that fills up with water in the spring. It then usually dries out in the summer, so the denizens of a vernal pool are on a tight schedule.
The water was brown from the tannin of the leaves that lined the pool. I was able to snag a good number of different species. Caddis larvae, small snails, mosquito larvae, midge larvae, etc.
The surprise was creatures that were 1/2 to 1 inch in length. They had pink gills and a slender body. I later identified them as Fairy Shrimp.
Attached File
Not my picture, but you can get an idea of what they look like.
I don't normally think of freshwater shrimp, let alone shrimp in New Hampshire.
You crazy kids probably know fairy shrimp by another name: Sea Monkeys.
May 16 is National Sea Monkey day, incidentally.