ROD & CREEL 39 



CHAPTER VII. 

 TROUT FLIES 



WIILE trout live on a great variety of food, such as fresh- 

 water shrimps, tadpoles, small fish, beetles, caterpillars, 

 ants and other insects that fall into the water, their 

 greatest delicacies are flies, in their various stages of develop- 

 ment that hatch out in the water. 



The subject of flies is a most engrossing one, it is a sub- 

 ject on which alone many books and scores of articles have 

 been written, and are still being written; so that in a book of 

 this sort it is quite impossible to do more than treat it briefly. 



First of all it may be said that there are really two kinds 

 of flies used for fishing, the real fly, which is an imitation 

 of the natural insect, such as the gnats, duns, sedges, etc., and 

 the sea trout and salmon flies nearly all of which have little or 

 no resemblance to any natural fly and are nothing more than 

 lures which have been invented by some angler or discovered 

 by chance. 



A few years ago the choice of a fly in our waters was not 

 nearly so important as it is to-day, and with half-a-dozen vari- 

 eties you were fairly well equipped. Such is still the case in 

 out-of-the-way places, but when it comes to water that is regu- 

 larly fished the choice of a fly is becoming more and more 

 important and the day of the "dry fly" rapidly approaching, 

 so that a few words on the life history of real trout flies may 

 be of interest. 



The flies on which tvout feed constitute a separate order 

 of insects known as the "Ephemerida" or day flies. These 

 insects pass through four distinct stages of various lengths, 

 taking altogether from one to three years. 



The first stage is that of the "egg" which is deposited in 

 the water, sinks to the bottom and hatches. 



The second stage is that of the "larva," or grub. In this 

 stage the insect sometimes lives one, sometimes two and even 

 three years. They live mostly on the bottom among the stones 

 or in the mud; they can both crawl and swim and feed on 

 vegetable matter. 



The third stage is that of the "Nymph," when the insect 

 resembles the adult only with wing pads instead of wings. 

 When ready the "Nymph" floats to the surface and in a short 



