barge fly n Upper Missip Valley, esp swWI
= mayfly n 1.
1950 WELS, 1 Inf, Cassville WI, Barge fly . . good sized—nearly as big as Green Bay fly. 1953 Dixon Eve. Telegraph (IL) 18 July 1/6 swWI, [Caption:] Call ’em May flies, barge flies, June bugs or whatever you like, but LaCrosse, Wis., is tired of sweeping them up after the heaviest “invasion” of the year. 1976 Hist. Cassville 21 swWI, During the summer of 1953 the barge flies came from the river into the sub-station of the Dairyland Power plant. They were so thick that they grounded out the station and shut down the plant. 2006 DARE File—Internet swWI, I grew up along the Mississippi in SW Wisconsin. Some years the hatch was so heavy, they broke out the snowplows to clean them up. We called them barge flies. 2011 Ibid ceIA, Mayflies, fish flies, barge flies—regardless of the chosen term, these insects hatched from the Mississippi River and swarmed Dubuque Saturday night.