I believe it’s a fly

And most important, they release all of their fish, even those stocked in catch-and-take streams.

On the opening day of trout season this year, I did all of that too. But I’m no purist. I just can’t shake my bait fishing habits. And I like to eat trout.

My trout hunting days started in the 1970s when I was working at the Washington Post and Jack Watson, who laid out the ads in the newspaper, offered to take me to Thurmont, Md., for a day on Fishing Creek.

We used short spinning rods, tiny reels, and Velveeta cheese as bait. We’d roll up a dime-size ball of cheese, stick the hook in, and cast upstream. When we felt a tap-tap, we’d let out more line to let the trout suck the bait in deeper. A minute later, we’d reel it in and clean it right there and stick the carcass in a baggie.

Corn is another popular trout bait since it resembles fish eggs and trout love them, but Velveeta is far better. It’s heavier, so no split shot is required, and it’s a great snack. But it comes off the hook easily, particularly on warm days.

When Berkley’s stinky-scented PowerBait came on the scene in 1988, we switched over. It came in the same orange color as Velveeta and stayed on the hook much better, though it requires a pinch of lead to get down to the trout, and they love it.

About the same time, we took an interest in fly fishing. I got two Sage Graphite II rods for half price when Eddie Bauer liquidated its equipment business, and Jack, who favored Orvis or Thomas and Thomas fly rods, invited me to Pine Creek for a weekend.

It was fun and frustrating. Used to lots of action on PowerBait, neither of us could match the hatch of bugs in the water, and the fishing was slow. Eventually, we stopped by a bait shop and got a packet of mealworms, and it was game on.

But the budding fly fisher in me felt, well, ashamed. I couldn’t shake bait fishing. Even after Jack and my friends graduated to the purist ranks and outfished me by matching the hatch with hand-tied flies, I kept a jar of PowerBait nuggets in my vest.

One recent year, I tried a hand-tied, orange sucker spawn egg fly that looked like Velveeta and PowerBait. And the trout loved it. When I can’t match the hatch, I’ll tie on one of those just to see if there are fish around, and typically I’ll catch at least one. Last weekend in Maryland’s Middle Creek, as others tried all sorts of lures, baits, and flies without success on stocked rainbows and golden trout, my orange fly from Murray’s Fly Shop in Edinburg, Va., worked like magic.

Had I found the answer to my angling struggle? Does it count as pure fly fishing? I’m torn. It’s a fly. But it imitates bait.

I asked Harry Murray, the owner of Murray’s Fly Shop and from whom I buy 10 or more “trout eggs” a year.

He voted no. He called it the “meat eaters” pattern preferred by anglers, like me, who sometimes use it to catch and kill trout. He likes his famous “Mr. Rapidan” bug imitations for more authentic fly fishing.

But Jed Grove of Slate Run Tackle Shop on the banks of Pine Creek in Slate Run, Pa., took a practical view of the fly some call a “glo bug.” He said all flies, such as pink “squirmy wormies” and other attractor patterns, imitate “bait” of some sort. March Brown and midge flies, after all, are tied to look like bugs trout eat, so what’s wrong with using a pattern that imitates the fish eggs trout like? Matching the hatch, after all, is about matching what’s in the water that trout are feeding on, he said.

The debate over the “ethics” of using egg flies has been going on for years and won’t end here. In the meantime, I’ll carry the orange flies next to my March Browns and midges and use whichever works best. After all, as I once saw written on the North American Fly Fishing Forum, “A fly is a fly is a fly.”

Paul Bedard is a senior columnist and author of Washington Secrets.