Outright, intentional, even joyful deceit is our game, and it places us in one of those gray areas of our culture where our ethical principles are put to the test. And fail.

In our society, deception is much practiced and little praised. To be sure, we have defined a few occasions where we will accept it -- the sleight-of-hand artist, for example. But the condition there is that we know we are being deceived, and so can laugh with friends, admiring the deceiver's skill. For the most part, though, it makes us exceedingly nervous to know that a deceiver is about the premises, and not to know his/her intentions for us.

This is to say that readers of high ethical standards may find themselves fish out of water, so to speak, and prefer to turn elsewhere. Those who accept that all Art is illusion, that the Craft of Deception may be perfected like any other craft -- read on.

To dress a nymph you will need an eyed feather from the tail of a male peacock, iridescent. You will need two tufts of soft fur from the base of a hare's ear.

But I have rushed ahead of myself, dear reader. You will first of all need Understanding.

It has wisely been said that the only reason for counterfeit money is real money. To deceive correctly requires considerable knowledge of the Real.

Thus, to dress a nymph, it will first be necessary for you to understand her naked nature, the realities of her existence, the ways of her family. We will call her Hexagenia.

Her family is ancient beyond time. Their name in Greek is literal and to the point; and in classic Greek their name is also their tragic destiny.

They are the family Ephemeroptera, meaning "they-of-the-short-lived-wing."

Hexagenia is truly an ephemeral creature, not entirely of our world. Mortal eye has seen her only under the rarest of conditions. To see her truly requires that the desirous human transcend his own terrestrial existence and enter her world of sunlit riffles on the water, of deep shadowy pools where time is suspended, of swift, threatening currents.

Here she lives all her life, except for one brief, explosive moment of sun lit ecstasy, a burst of extravagant sexuality that makes the air itself shimmer. To consummate the uncontrollable fire of her sexuality, she risks everything, abandons her known universe of water to enter the brilliant and dizzying world of light and air. And there, inevitably, dies. It is her destiny, and the destiny of her family, from long before the time the ape-like creatures of land learned to use a tool.

The transition between universes is fraught with perils, which is probably why we undertake it so seldom. As the mystics inform us, a personal transformation is required, a death-in-life, a rebirth in ecstasy. And this is confirmed by the history of Hexagenia and her sisters, whose ecstatic transformations are fired by sexuality.

In the dreamy, drifting, underwater world of the nymphs, a tremor passes. An electric tremor, an incomprehensible frisson of desire in those who have never known desire. It cannot be understood, any more than the first tremblings of sexuality can be understood by an adolescent girl.

It grows in power. It seizes upon Hexagenia and all her sisters at the same time. It inflames their desire. The dark and comforting world they have known suddenly seems confined, a watery, sexless prison.

They become restless, dissatisfied. They conceive an inexplicable passion for that strange light that has hovered over them all their lives.

They begin to dance, slowly at first, swaying in the current, wrapping their cloaks about their naked bodies, now becoming mysteriously transformed.

Suddenly, one rips her cloak asunder and, intensely vulnerable in her nakedness, flies upward and upward to the edge of the universe. Then another, and another, and soon the full frenzy has spread to all the sisters. They rip away their garments in ecstasy and penetrate the fragile film that separates the Worlds.

Now, gasping in the unfamiliar air, blinded by the intensity of light, consumed by passion, they find that they have been transformed into winged creatures.

No longer innocent nymphs dreaming their watery dreams, they are in that phase of their life where they are known as "duns." They struggle helplessly at the surface, wings too new and too wet to fly. And in their consuming passion they have thrown themselves into a realm of threatening monsters which arise from the depths to consume Hexagenia and her sisters by the thousands.

Hexagenia struggles, trying to move her wings, trying to escape this sudden, undreamed danger. Somehow, miraculously, she is able to fly a bit, then a bit more. With each perilous flight her wings dry a little, and she can fly a little farther. In a matter of moments, another transformation has occurred. Hexagenia is now a "inner."

For a thousand days of life, she will spend one single day of ecstatic sexual maturity as a "spinner", breathing air for the first time, feeling the heat of the unaccustomed sun. In the world she now inhabits, love and death are equally balanced, equally inevitable.

Ah, but the dance, the dance of love. Above her in the air the intricate dance of thousands of passionate males is swirling. Their passion is equal to hers; they will die for it. Their last vital energy is expended in the explosive sexuality of the dance; and they fall, dead, in the hundreds, in the thousands, in the tens of thousands.

At last, her volcanic passions gratified, she reaches the shore, and falls exhausted.

But now her own death is near. She will have the shortest of times to fulfill her mission, to complete her circle of life's spiral.

Shortly she takes wing again, gliding out over the surface of the water where she arose. In her last act, she gives immortality to her family. She deposits her eggs in the water, where they sink into the green, mysterious depths to begin the circle again.

Then she falls, dead, to the surface, her wings so new now useless, flat, spent. It is her final transformation: She is known as a "spentwing."

That is the truth of the matter, the reality behind our deception.

From Nymph to Dun to Spinner to Spentwing is the life cycle of Ephemeroptera Hexagenia, the common may-fly.

Hexagenia is a principal source of food for the trout, and it is on the trout we will practice our deception.

The language of the angler is precise and ambivalent at the same time, and much of it is his alone. The entomologist, for example, knows nothing of nymphs and duns and spinners and spentwings. He speaks of larval shucks and sub-imagoes and imagoes.

And take the simple word "strike." It refers (1) to the moment the fish takes the hook, (2) to the action of the angler in setting the hook, and (3) to the whole gestalt in which the fish takes the hook and the angler sets it. Which of these is meant at any given moment is clear only to the angler.

It seems logical, or at least reasonable, that folk who invent their own vocabulary should come to devote themselves to graceful deception. And, indeed, they came to it rather quickly, as history goes.

About the year 200 A.D., the Roman naturalist Aelian reported:

"I have heard of a Macedonian way of catching fish: between Beroea and Thessalonica runs a river called the Astraeus, and in it there are fish with speckled skins.

"What they are called, you had best ask the Macedonians.

"These fish feed on a fly peculiar to the country. In boldness it is like a fly, in size you might call it a midge. It imitates the color of a wasp, and it hums like a bee. The natives generally call it Hippouros.

"When the fish observes a fly on the surface, it swims quietly up, afraid to stir the water above, lest it should scare away its prey.

"Then, coming up by its shadow, it opens its mouth gently and gulps down the fly, like a wolf carrying off a sheep from the fold, or an eagle a goose from the farmyard; having done this, it goes below the rippling water.

"Now, though the fishermen know of this, they do not use these flies at all for bait; for if a man's hand touch them, they lose their natural color, their wings wither, and they become unfit food for the fish.

"But the fishermen have planned a snare for the fish, and get the better of them by their fisherman's craft.

"They fasten red wool around a hook, and fix on to the wool two feathers of a waxy color which grow under a cock's wattles. Their rod is six feet long, and their line is the same length.

"Then they throw their snare, and the fish, attracted and maddened by the color, comes straight at it, thinking from the pretty sight to get a dainty mouthful. When, however, it opens its jaws, it is caught by the hook and enjoys a bitter meal, a captive."

Let us now leap forward a millenium or so, to the year 1496 to be precise. A man named Columbus is still trying to convince the centers of capital that there is something of value over the water. But a canny woman of God named Dame Juliana Berners is revealing the treasures that lie beneath the waters, and how to acquire them.

Dame Juliana was Prioress of Sopwell, England. In 1496 she published "A Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle." In it she described twelve varieties of artificial fly, with complete instructions on how to dress them. A number of these flies are dressed today exactly as she described them.

I do not believe Dame Juliana was beatified by her Church. This oversight, as it must have been, has certainly been corrected by the church of the fly fisherman, where she is installed permanently as a presiding semi-deity.

Her Treatyse was incorporated into a new edition of the Boke of St. Albans, a kind of training manual for the young nobility. It treated, as well, the sportive arts of falconry, heraldry and hunting.

If this seems a limited publication, it was. However, it suited the purposes of Dame Juliana perfectly. It was definitely her aim to restrict her secret weapon to those of impeccable moral stature. She wished to discourage the interest of idlers in the sport of fishing, "which they might destroy utterly by virtue of the skill acquired from this treatise."

Dame Juliana was death on the vice of Idleness, "which is the principal cause inciting a man to many other vices, as is right well known."

She was also an exponent of what we would call environmentalism today. Remember she is giving this counsel in 1496:

"I charge you, that you break no man's hedges in going about your sports, nor open any man's gates without shutting them again. Also, you must not use this aforesaid artful sport for covetousness, merely for the increasing or saving of your money, but mainly for your enjoyment and to procure the health of your body, and more especially of your soul.

"Also, you must not be too greedy in catching your said game [the fish is meant here], as in taking too much at one time, a thing which can easily happen if you do in every point as this present treatise shows you.

"That could easily be the occasion of destroying your own sport and other men's also.

"When you have a sufficient mess, you should covet no more at that time. Also you should busy yourself to nourish the game in everything that you can.

"And all those that do according to this rule, will have the blessing of God and St. Peter."

Fair enough. That seems to me a good bargain.

The classic tragedy of the Ephemeroptera is known by the angler (rather too prosaically, I think) as "the hatch." When the may-fly nymphs are transformed for their dazzling dance of sun lit sex, the air above the stream is a swirling cloud of translucent wings, vibrating at the frequency dictated by the Goddess of All.

The trout at these times become infected with the possibly more mundane frenzy of feeding. The surface of a stream can become almost invisible in the churning maelstrom of trout rising to take the duns as they emerge from the nymphal case. (The duns here are known as "emergers.") Sometimes the fish will leap out of the water entirely to gulp down a fluttering spinner.

The angler at this time is usually in a state of electric adrenalin excitement: he is "fishing the hatch," or "fishing the rise," a moment somewhat resembling orgasm in other areas of endeavor.

The angler knows that this magical moment, when his desires have intersected the desires of Hexagenia and the trout simultaneously, will not long endure. It may be a period of opportunity only a few moments long, or an hour. In the extraordinary event of a "multiple hatch", when several species come simultaneously to term, it can last a day. Not many have fished the rise for an entire day.

It is the angler's task now to "match the hatch." By studying the species and the size of insect, he tries to duplicate that exactly from his box of flies. With trembling hands he ties his best guess to his "tippet," the ultimate, hair-thin tip of his leader. (The breaking strength of his tippet is approximately that of two strands of white hair from a horse's tail, twisted together; as was Dame Juliana's. That of the modern angler is monofilament nylon, of course.)

In fishing the hatch, he will probably first attempt to deceive the trout with the simulacrum of a floating fly, which is to say, a dun that has fallen back to the water after becoming airborne, or one that has not yet escaped the surface tension. This is "fishing the dry fly," since the fly rests as lightly as possible on the surface of the water, and does not sink.

But sometimes, even when the hatch is on, this will prove fruitless. To the angler's frustrated eyes, the trout are rising to take everything that appears -- except his tempting deception.

Then he may notice, if he is still capable of noticing anything, that the trout are not striking, but "bulging."

When a trout bulges, he does not actually break the surface, but causes a distinct hump in the water; he is rising and turning just below the surface.

To the practiced eye, bulging means only one thing -- the trout are "nymphing." That is, they are ignoring the flies which have reached the surface, and are taking the emergers before they have cast off the nymphal case.

During the hatch, the insects are present in every stage from nymph to spinner. It is not known why trout will, by common agreement, choose to feed only on one stage, but they do. In the angler's lexicon, they are being "selective."

When the trout are nymphing, then clearly the angler must nymph as well. (Here is another case in which a single verb refers equally to what the fish is doing, what the angler is doing, and the two combined.) He will replace his dry fly with another illusion, this one suggesting the nymphal stage, or the emerger.

In recent years, fishing the nymph has almost entirely replaced the traditional (since Macedonian times) method of fishing the wet fly. The dry fly was a recent innovation anyway, as such things go, having appeared in the middle of the last century.

It is getting pretty sophisticated. The angler can find instructions on tying what are called "stillborn duns." This particular deception consists of imitating those duns which have been unable to free themselves completely from the nymphal case. Patterns are available with one wing free, both wings free, either wing free, the nymphal case almost entirely shucked off, the nymphal case barely shucked off at all, and so forth.

The verisimilitude of these deceptions is remarkable, particularly since the illusion is created by the crafty combination of feathers from birds, furs from mammals, and bits of tinsel from laboratories..

Many an angler owns certain flies which he admires so much for their aesthetics that he won't fish them, for fear of spoiling their artistic perfection. Most of them are a little embarrassed by this situation, but they do it anyway.

The art of tying a fly is a painterly craft rather than a draftsman's. It is more the art of a Manet than an Ingres.

For all the meticulous imitation of detail, everything is done by suggestion. A bit of tinsel properly placed suggests the flash of light from a segmented body; a lightly barred feather from a cock's neck suggests the delicate veining of Hexagenia's wings. All here is the aesthetics of illusion, not of mechanical duplication.

There are chicken farms exclusively devoted to raising chickens for the character of their feathers, and their special use in deceiving the trout. An excellent "grizzly" neck from a single cock may bring $60 in the marketplace. A "saddle hackle" (from the chicken's back), is less valued, but will still cost $20 or so. A single chicken may thus be worth well over a hundred dollars, as it is ultimately retailed.

There is, however, a fundamental contradiction in this gospel of perfect imitation. Because it is unquestionable fact that some of the greatest flies ever created (from the point of view of catching fish), resemble no insect ever seen on the face of the earth.

The angler's lexicon accommodates this puzzling anomaly by dividing artificial flies into two categories, the "Imitators," and the "Attractors." An Attractor, most simply put, is an artificial which catches fish but doesn't look like anything in particular.

The Royal Coachman, for example, one of the all-time great Attractors, resembles no known insect. It is so named because it is dressed in the colors of the Royal Coachman of the English Court, and was reputedly first tied by the Royal Coachman himself. I do not vouch for the latter part, as it was told to me by a fly fisherman.

I have promised toteach you how to dress a nymph, and so I shall: the Gold-ribbed Hare's Ear Nymph.

In addition to its obvious aesthetics, the Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear is a proven fish taker. It is, in the angler's vocabulary, "deadly." Here are the materials you will need. If it seems like a listing of alchemical significance, you are correct. There is something a bit alchemical in all of this.

1. A #10to #16 double length hook.
2. A medium brown feather from the breast of a partridge.
3. A tuft of fur from the base of a hare's ear.
4. Four inches of medium gold tinsel.
5. A dark brown feather from the wing of a turkey. Aspool of tying thread.
6. Secure the hook, point down, in a small vise. With pliers, crush the barb of the hook flat. (This is so you may release your trout without harming him. You are correct in believing the Macedonians knew nothing of this....).
7. Wrap the shank of the hook with tying thread, moving from the eye back to the bend. Leave the thread hanging.
8. Select a few fibers from the tip of a partridge feather and professional fly tyer can whip these out so rapidly you would find it difficult to believe.

This pattern, Attractor-like, has been highly simplified for easier visualization by non-anglers. It is, in fact, the illusion of a Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear

Now you have dressed, or visualized dressing, your first nymph - the illusion of an illusion. You have transcended mere actuality and entered into the very Heart of Illusion from which actuality is born

Do not concern yourself with the opinion of other anglers on your nymph. In this art, they are the critics, long on opinion and short on insight. The only aesthetic authority here is the trout, he of the speckled skin.

And bear in mind that if your artful illusion prevails, it is not merely some brainless fish you have deceived. If you fool the trout, you have fooled Nature herself. Fortunately, She seems to like that, from time to time.

If you want to know more, you had best ask the Macedonians.