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Insectology
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Where Can I Go?
What are "insects"
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"Nothing in their behavior is accidental The sport of fly fishing originated when anglers began to try to catch fish that were known to eat insects. Because they could see fish feeding on "natural", flying insects, earliest efforts at imitation were primarily crude impersonations of above-water insect forms. Some years later, "sunken" versions of these winged insects were used to suggest under-water bugs that had "drowned." As the sport progressed and the underwater, immature forms of insect life upon which fish fed were discovered, other bits and pieces of feathers and fur were concocted into "flies" to suggest the "real thing" to fish feeding beneath the water's surface. 300 years later, it is still this challenge of "duplicating nature" that distinguishes "fly fishing" from all other forms of angling. And it is the ability to convince fish consistently that flies are "real" that demonstrates a fly fisher's knowledge of insect biology and behavior . . . and is responsible to a significant extent for the tremendous satisfaction we gain from our sport. In this chapter, we present a "happy marriage" between the complicated science of aquatic entomology and the practical "need to know" of insects as they relate to fly fishing. This mixture we refer to as, "Insectology". Let's begin our
"insectology" journey by reviewing, What
are "insects?"
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