80 OLD FLIES IN NEW DRESSES 



fall in and meet with the same fate. The 

 next thing I did was to catch a caterpillar, 

 scrape the fly dressing off my hook, and 

 put him on it instead. I caught several 

 trout in this way, but found that it was 

 almost impossible to cast any distance 

 without shaking off the caterpillar. After 

 much trouble caused by this difficulty, 

 which was very trying to the temper, 

 as the caterpillars always seemed to come 

 off the hook at the most critical moment, 

 and having got a fairly good basket, I 

 found it was time to return. That night 

 I managed to make some fairly good imi- 

 tations of the little green caterpillar to use 

 on the morrow, instead of the natural ones. 

 These imitations met with success, and 

 since that time I have been able to im- 

 prove on the dressings then used. 



I have found many different kinds of 

 caterpillars in the stomachs of trout, but 

 small green ones of various sorts were 

 decidedly the most numerous. The species 

 I have most frequently found is, I believe, 

 the larval form of the Tortrix viridana. I 

 have never found a large caterpillar in a 

 trout, though I have caught trout with 



