“Matching the hatch”—another common term you’ll hear in fly-fishing circles—is the act of choosing the right fly and presenting it in the correct manner to fool selectively feeding trout. To do this you must be able to identify the insect, be familiar with its behavior, size, shape, and to a certain extent color, so it’s important to have a working knowledge of the most important types of insects: mayflies (Ephemeroptera), caddisflies (Trichoptera), midges (Diptera), and stoneflies (Plecoptera).

Don’t worry, you don’t need to know the Latin names of each type of insect but it may help later on when you learn to discern one type of mayfly from another and want to accurately describe the insect to fellow fly fishers. A good text on identification is Hatches II by Al Caucci and Bob Nastasi, but a more up-to-date guide may be troutnut.com, which would be better named as bugnut.com because the web site is almost entirely devoted to current freshwater insect identification and information.