We fly fishers spend a lot of time learning to recognize insects and the stages of their life cycles, so we can be prepared to mimic exactly what the trout are eating at any given moment. But even when your head is full of this knowledge, there are times that you have to admit how little we really know. On a recent evening on the Battenkill, I identified two species of mayflies hatching, spinners of a different species in the air, ovipositing caddisflies, and yellow Sallies fluttering about. In the two hours I spent on the water, not a single trout rose, and the two fish I was able to spot seemed not to be eating nymphs, either. As my friend, Sandy Hays, likes to say, “When they will, they will . . . and when they won’t, they won’t.” | 