"Willi & Sue" wrote


IMO, a soft hackle isn't very well suited to either floating or half
floating unless you tie it


You are correct, and as I look back on the situation I see I allowed myself
to get suckered into very bad design tactics. I stumbled onto the M&P,
fished floated, as a real fish taker and then make a key error of defining
the design goal as "float a M&P" All design efforts follow from the
defined goal, and thus that definition is the most important step. Had I
looked a little deeper and defined the problem as "find out why these fish
love a M&P and then design a floating fly that will have similar qualities
to please them" I'm sure I would have had more success. I "think" they
were taking it for a little dark caddis that was around, but I didn't take
the time to seine and study, ..... there were also a WIDE variety of other
bugs on the water ( I love the HFork :-) and the fish may have been eating
something else ... the rises, for one thing, were sips, not at all splashy
.... I was too busy casting to look much .... fishing SO often gets in the
way of learning more about fishing G