14 FLY FISHING AND SPINNING 



ring peculiar to the rise of a fish. The rise of a trout varies 

 in size, from the most delicate circular dimple of the big 

 fish feeding near the surface, to the splash and wave made 

 by some small fish as he jumps clean out of the water, in his 

 eagerness to get the fly. We will now go on down-stream, 

 keeping well away from the water, as we don't want to 

 frighten the fish. Trout, as I said before, lie with their 

 heads up-stream, and their attention is thus directed to 

 any food which may come floating down toward them 

 either on or below the surface of the water ; it is necessary, 

 therefore, for the fisherman to find out what the trout are 

 feeding on, and then present this food to them in the most 

 natural manner possible. The wet fly fisherman does this 

 by sinking his flies below the surface, and dropping them 

 down-stream toward the fish, and the dry fly fisherman 

 throws his fly up-stream on the surface of the water, and 

 above the trout, and lets it float down to the fish. 



The food which the wet or dry fly fisherman has to 

 imitate, in order to attract and secure the trout, are the 

 various forms of water insects, either in their larval, sub- 

 imago or imago state. The transition from the pupal to 

 the sub-imago form is quite naturally, though erroneously, 

 alluded to by most fishermen as " hatching/' The water 

 insect is hatched when it leaves the egg and enters the larval 

 stage of its life, not when it undergoes the metamorphosis 

 into the sub-imago, or imago state. 



There is but little difference in the appearance of an 

 Ephemera when it is bursting its mask and entering into 

 its sub-imago existence and that of the sub-imago in a 

 drowned condition, and it is therefore in these two con- 

 ditions that the wet fly fisherman imitates its appearance 

 and presents it to the trout. But it is only when this 

 water insect is in its living and flying sub-imago or imago 

 condition that the dry fly fisherman copies its appearance. 



