It is not possible to study terrestrial insects apart from the plants in which they dwell. Insects, including aquatics, either feed directly on plants during some phase of their life cycle or depend, in predaceous or parasitical ways, upon organisms that do. Many are host-specific on a single species, or genus, of plants or fungi, while others utilize a wider range of habitat and foods, but most are closely associated, at the very last, with a specific botanical family. Only in understanding the role that plants play at the bottom of the food chain can the warmwater angler hope to catch a glimpse of that sublime order that governs the deceptively chaotic world of tiny creatures that buzz by the millions where the pond meets the land. Intelligent fly selection requires not only that the angler distinguish between oak and maple, goldenrod and pigweed, azalea and iris, but that he also seek to understand how these plants compliment each other in well-defind systems.
Insects are a vital, integral part of all plant communities and inseparable thereform.
Gardeners and naturalists will readily understand why the sophisticated warwater fly fisher devotes as much study to botany as to entomology. I had the pleasure of fishing a beautiful pond on a private estate last spring. The owner assured me that the pond holds a good population of large bluegill. I rigged my three-weight, launched the tube and pondered the question of fly selection because I wanted to exhaust the dry fly possibilities bedore resorting to nymphs. I had a working knowledge of trout stream ecology, but knew little of the organisms that sunfish eat from day to day.