On 11 Dec 2007 19:49:27 GMT, Scott Seidman
wrote:

Yes, that certainly is one way to fish a wet fly effectively, but all the
old gents I know that tie on a cast of three or four winged wet flies (the
same three or four flies for one or two seasons!) who swing down and across
while wading downstream certainly catch many big fish-- and they work much
less hard at it than a nymph fisherman, certainly.

When my mother died several years ago, Joanne and I found two of her
old Wheatley fly boxes. One full of dries she had tied, and the other
full of wets she had tied. There was no nymph fishing for us in the
40s, early 50s. Dries, wets, and streamers were the only flies we had
in our fly boxes.

We would fish wets not unlike we fish nymphs today, albeit without
weights, and included swinging them down and across. When we fished
in northern NH every June/July, the favorite pattern was the Light
Cahill, both wet and dry. The wets worked when there was no hatch and
many times we would get hits/catch fish while retrieving the fly after
it had swung down stream. If there were strike indicators in the 40s,
they would have worked well with a wet. Every strike was *felt*; no
telling how many fish we *did not* feel.

Dave