On 11 Dec, 20:09, mdk77 wrote:


These books sure helped me this year. I envy you folks who have been
fishing for many years & who already know all of this stuff.

- Dave

What is a wet fly? Well basically, most of the old traditional wet
flies are dry flies that don´t float very well!

Most of these flies, including very many soft hackles, represent dead,
or spent flies, and emergers. Some, (like those I showed), are
specific nymph imitations.

In a hatch, nymphs will be taken at any point in the water column, but
often just below or in the film.

I do use some of these soft hackle nymphs, ( the nymph 2 type) with a
couple of turns of lead under the thorax. This helps to ensure that it
penetrates the film well, ( "good entry") , but it wont usually make
it sink very far, and in medium to fast water hardly at all, unless
other steps are taken, ( mending) as that is dependent on the leader
set up, and how one fishes it.

The only reason I differentiate, is to suit the various stages of the
hatch, and also the water being fished. In fast broken water, a more
or less "standard" soft hackle will usually be most effective. The
calmer the water becomes, the better the imitation has to be.

Without movement, none of these flies will work very well. In fast
water, the water itself, and the drag on the leader provides more than
sufficient movement. In calmer water, one needs a better imitation, or
must supply movement by "working" the flies.That is the reason for the
various types. They are all "soft hackles", but designed to do
different things under different circumstances.

This is also why many of these flies will not be successful unless
there is a hatch!

Most modern nymphing techniques depend on getting down to the fish, by
using bead-heads, etc etc. and will work even when there is no hatch,
simply because one covers more fish at the fishes´ holding depth, and
few fish will pass up a serendipitous titbit in easy range, hatch or
no hatch.

These flies just don´t work like that. There are ways of getting them
down, using weight, and they will work, but you can not fish these
flies deep (and under control) without weight of some sort somewhere.
They are primarily designed to catch fish holding on the edges of fast
broken water, or in pocket water, and in relatively shallow water.
They work best when a hatch is in progress, the fish are feeding, and
the appropriate pattern and type is used At other times under other
circumstances, they can be quite useless! They are not a universal
panacea.

There are also times when a winged wet fly dressed and fished
correctly is a great deal more successful.

Sometimes, the only way to catch fish consistently is by"dredging" the
bottom, with some form of deep nymphing technique. At such times, the
soft hackles just wont work.

Something else of importance here, which is more or less universally
ignored, or forgotten nowadays. These and practically all other
traditional wet flies ( excluding fancies) are basically failures.

All the old literature constantly repeats that the best time for a
rise was when the dry flies first alighted on the water. Nymphs as
such were not used. This was also the reason for the extremely
frequent short line casting. The only really successful anglers were
those who fished upstream. If they could have gotten their flies to
float, then they would have done! They could not, so they designed
compromises. Those compromises are what we have now.

They were never designed to sink at all, and it was impossible to sink
them much with the gear in use anyway. They are the next best thing to
a floating fly. Namely a barely sunk fly. ALL the winged wet flies
were designed with this in mind, which is why they are very poor when
used as "swung" flies etc. ( There was never any sensible rationale
for this ). They were designed to be good imitations of FLOATING
flies.

The fact that they sank was a severe disadvantage to many anglers. So
designing them to sink as little as possible was the next best thing.
Other flies, for other hatches were designed to sink immediately and
imitate sunk spents etc.

These flies were used for hundreds of years, They represent adult
floating flies,practically WITHOUT EXCEPTION!!!! and WERE NEVER
DESIGNED TO SINK! This is a modern application.

The whole rift between wet and dry flies is basically nothing more
than a series of misunderstandings, and also explains why virtually
nobody knows how to fish wet flies properly any more. They should be
fished as dry flies, upstream and as accurate imitations of the hatch.

This is also why ALL!! the old literature specified cock hackles for
wet flies. It floated longer! The whole soft hackle movement was a
separate affair.

Having just re-read over a hundred and fifty of the older books, this
theory is borne out by every single one of them, and also accounts for
some apparently odd ideas, which in the light of what I just wrote are
not odd at all.

TL
MC