A couple of years ago I had a great afternoon of trout fishing on one of my favorite ponds, but afterward I was embarrassed to admit what I had caught all those trout on. You know how it is -- you think of yourself as a match-the-hatch purist, and you want to tell your angling amigos how you studied the water and seined a few bugs to learn what was hatching and then tied a #22 midge to a 7X tippet and blah blah blah. That's the way it happens in the books, right? You don't want to confess that you just happened to hit the Doodlebug hatch.

You don't want to confess to that because, of course, there is no Doodlebug hatch, and the Doodlebug resembles no known member of the insect world. In fact, what it resembles more than anything is a cigarette filter that's come slightly unhinged. So if the Doodlebug is not representative of any kind of fly in any stage of a fly's life -- is it a fly? All I know is that it often catches trout when nothing else is working and at those times I'm not too proud to hitch one up to a 4X tippet and throw it out there.

But is it a fly, or is it an artificial lure? There must be a line somewhere, and I try to figure out where that line is so that I don't cross it. I won't flyfish with creations made of plastic or rubber and I won't use the "fly" that's tied to resemble an earthworm. But I certainly do use "flies" that are meant to imitate small fish. I've never quite been able to visualize the entymological umbrella that covers both insects and fish, but I routinely tie on streamers.

Nor will I drench a fly in the scent of bait. I have read on a fly-dealer's website about the technique of saturating a fly with, say, worm juice. Can that be legal, in FFO waters? I somehow doubt it. Soaking a fly in Essence of Garden Hackle is, to me, the same as fishing with worms.

I try to be a purist. I ponder the deep questions of what is flyfishing and what is not. But then comes the Doodlebug hatch...