These data were compiled for an outreach article published in the Boatman's Quarterly Review, which is a magazine published by Grand Canyon River Guides Association. The objectives of our study was to describe the outcomes of the 2018-2020 Bug Flows experiment to a general audience. These data represent 10 years (2012-2021) of invertebrate data and 100 years (1921-2021) of flow data. These data were collected from the Colorado River in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Grand Canyon National Park. These data were collected by recreational river runners through a community science effort where we provided river runners with light trapping equipment to sample emergent aquatic insects each night of their expeditions. Invertebrate counts represent total numbers of adult insects sampled by light traps, which can be divided by hours elapsed (sampling duration) to calculate a catch rate. Flow data were attained from the USGS gage 09380000 at Lees Ferry on the Colorado River. These data can be used to interpret changes in aquatic insect emergence rates over time and to look at changes in stage variation at Lees Ferry over time.