will not touch food of 
a different character. 
The Hexagenia bi- 
lineata, one of the 
seven wonders of Dai- 
cey Pond, were one 
week late this year. 
Five others of the 
“seven wonders” are 
the incredibly vast 
number of large trout 
inhabiting that beau- 
tiful little pond, fed 
entirely by four 
springs and having 
an outlet unnavigable 
by any except very 
small trout, and the 
“seventh wonder” is 
the Old Walrus, him- 
self, Maurice York, 
who has forgotten more about the habi- 
tations, customs and habits of the 
Sourdnahunk trout than anyone else 
ever succeeded in learning. 
HE season was backward and the 
nymphae seemed to know it and 
stayed below. This lack of considera- 
tion on the part of these pernicious in- 
sects made me steal another week from 
business, for who, having once experi- 
enced a hatch of “them big millers,” 
could tear himself away from York’s 
when they were daily expected? 
The hatch began usually at 
6:30 P. M. and lasted until 8:15, 
after which the trout bulged 
outrageously. At 7:30 the flies 
were coming up by the hun- 
dreds, especially at the upper 
end of the pond, and hundreds 
of great trout were coming up 
after them, sometimes gently 
sucking them in, as large trout 
usually do, merely dimpling the 
surface, and sometimes hurtling 
themselves out of the water with 
resounding splashes, as the 
smaller trout almost invariably 
do, and as even the big ones fre- 
quently did toward the end of 
the hatch when their stolid dis- 
positions were overcome by the 
excitement. The nymphs would zig-zag 
their way to the surface by short jerky 
motions, the envelopes burst open and 
the Green Mays or Green Drakes 
(that’s better than a ten-syllable com- 
pound of Latin and Greek) draw them- 
selves therefrom, often experiencing 
difficulty in the operation. 
HEN not taken immediately, they 
would exercise their wings, fly a 
short distance, alight on the water, 
flutter a bit, and finally make for the 
woods, sometimes after several ineffec- 
tual attempts. After living two or 
three days in the trees, the sub-imago 

Pools such as this are the dry-fly man’s delight 
(dun) sheds its skin and becomes an 
imago (spinner), changing from a yel- 
lowish-green to light reddish-brown. 
At this stage we see the danse d’amour 
of the males, which are about two- 
thirds the size of the females, when 
countless thousands are over the water, 
rising and falling rhythmically, hover- 
ing so low over the canoes that a net 
swung briskly overhead would capture 
hundreds, in fact, literally filling the 
air. When a female imago appears, the 
nearest males dart toward her, she is 
seized from beneath by the caudal for- 
TUITVMOQUUITUUTTTTU UTTER 
Those anglers who have looked upon 
Maine 
will be interested in this article by a stu- 
dent of the dry fly, Mr. George K. Wood- 
worth. Readers who are interested in this 
country will find a descriptive article on 
it by the same author in the 1924 edition, 
“In the Maine Woods,” annual publication 
of the Bangor and Aroostook railroad. 
streams as  wet-fly water 
HIV TUT 
ceps of the first male to reach her, and 
her eggs fertilized. The male then re- 
joins his fellows and the female pro- 
ceeds to deposit her eggs (between 5,- 
000,000 and 10,000,000) in the water, 
after which she falls lifeless on the sur- 
face, a “spent gnat” with outstretched 
wings, hence the hackle-point-winged 
flies of Halford, Mills and others. Thus 
ends the three-year life of this interest- 
ing insect, about three years under 
water as a nymph, breathing with 
tracheal gills, and about three days as 
a fly which cannot feed because its 
mouth is atrophied. The egg deposited 
in the water by the female sinks to the 
only, 
bottom and_ hatches 
out into a grig, which 
in time becomes a 
nymph (larva with 
external wing de- 
velopment and no pu- 
pal or quiescent state) 
and the latter grows 
and molts its skin 
about twenty times as 
it increases in size, 
Wn tilt heel yanetas 
hatched, whereupon 
the curious cycle is 
repeated. 
It is indeed an en- 
tomological freak that 
the Green Mays should 
be so abundant in 
Daicey Pond when but 
a few appear on those 
nearby. When the Green Mays are on, 
and the hatch lasted five weeks in 
1922, to my personal knowledge, the 
big, highly-colored male trout with 
their undershot hooked lower jaws, 
come up, and although from the Ist of 
June to the 10th of July, 1923, many 
large trout were taken in Daicey, there 
was not one male among them; “on in- 
formation and belief,” they never rise 
except when there is a hatch of Green 
Mays. The smaller flies don’t interest 
them at all. When the Green Mays are 
up, it is dry-fly or nothing, although 
sometimes a Green Drake, wet, 
used as a dropper, was taken, 
and once a youth of 15 who had 
never cast before, fluked a 
pound-and-a-quarter female on 
a wet Parmacheene and won- 
dered why he could never do it 
again. The wet-fly men actually 
cursed the Green Mays and said 
they spoiled the fishing! When 
the Green Mays are on, Hal- 
ford’s Green May fly, either 
male or female, it really doesn’t 
matter, for the trout is not a 
complete entomologist, or his 
Brown Mayfly, will kill, and I 
found also that Wm. Mills & 
Sons’ Little Yellow May Dun 
was very effective, in fact I took 
my largest trout on a No. 12 fly of that 
pattern after my Halford’s had been 
chewed to shreds. Once more, not a 
Yellow May, wet, gaudy imitation of a 
tropical butterfly, but a dainty little 
creation with yellowish-green, lightly- 
spotted, forwardly-cocked wings, which 
stands up on the water for all the 
world like a small H. bilineata. 
DURING the Green May season, 3:30 
A. M. was my favorite time on the 
pond, except, of course, the time of the 
evening rise. I didn’t have much com- 
pany at that hour, but there was much 
of entomological interest to observe. 
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