INSECTS AND FLY FISHING

Anyone who has ever fished at all, soon learns that fish eat the darndest things. Their struggle to survive forces them to eat anything that happens to be available, and this includes plants, animals, and occasionally rocks, sticks, and metal. If you examine the contents of your catch, you find such things as insects, minnows, and even moss.

Fortunately the main part of a trout's diet consists of insects, for most plants are hard to imitate by anything other than a green woolly worm.

A trout's diet probably consists from 100 percent insects to about 50-35 percent as the fish increases in weight. Fish never totally stop eating insects, and this accounts for the occasional huge fish that is caught on a small fly. As a general rule the smaller fish feed almost exclusively on insects, and the larger three to five year olds will favor minnows and occasional insects. If you fish small dries, you will probably find smaller fish in your catch, but that may not be the important thing.

Since insects form such a great portion of a trout's diet, you will need to know a little about them. Not that you need to become a walking encyclopedia, having every insect within 50 miles of the stream memorized, categorized, and collected, for an angler can catch fish by just sticking to a limited selection of flies such as the Adams, Lt. Cahill, Quill Gordon, Royal Coachman, and others, and not know a thing about the insects they imitate. In fact these patterns actually do not represent any insect in particular, for they just represent a broad range of insect types that could be found on any river at a given time.

Theodore Gordon, America's first dedicated angler–entomologist, even after more thorough study of insects finally decided that it was a hopeless task, and came up with a pattern that imitates a group of early season May flies that have similar colors. Many other flies have been created for the same reason. Combining similarities between insects often creates very similar patterns.

Another method of being a successful angler without actually studying entomology is to find out the local favorite patterns for the stream you plan to fish. Using this method, you really do not need to know the name of the fly you are using, much less what it imitates, to successfully catch fish. If you choose to follow this method, you will take your place with other anglers who when asked what you are using will say "I don't know, but it works."

Many anglers have taken the supreme step in fly fishing, and have made a study of all the insects they will encounter in their fishing travels. These scientific anglers know exactly what is on the water, and they will probably be using a fly they have tied and invented themselves. If you ask him what it is, he will probably mumble something about Callibaeitis spinner or the like. Certainly these anglers will enjoy the greatest success in the long run, even though other anglers may out fish them from time to time.

Certainly knowing something about stream ecology is very important, but you can never know everything about the habits of fish, and sooner or later we all find fish that we cannot interest in anything we present to them. But the more tricks we know about how to fool the trout will never hurt. And it is for this reason that you can make a few notes in this book that will help you know what to use at various times wherever you fish.