"Willi & Sue" wrote

I think there's lot of room for experimentation with soft hackles. Many of
the established patterns are old and were developed in England for the
hatches there. Not that that's bad, it's just that there aren't many
patterns
around developed to imitate American hatches.



Nemes has a book, "Soft Hackle Imitations" ( I think is the title ) that
does some work along these lines. Borger and Hughes also mention soft
hackles fished for specific hatches

This is something with great potential, imho, and I, too, spend a lot of
time fishing soft hackle flies to rising fish. Indeed, I'd say that 90% of
the time a riser will take a soft hackle, IN the film, that comes close to
the size of the natural even if nothing else seems close to the naturals.
SHs
that were closely matched to the hatch would be damn deadly, indeed

Willi, I've given up on the idea of "claves" and such and probably will
never meet you, ... I'm too much of a loner ... but I sure wish we lived
close enough to compare notes on this, as a season went from bug to bug.

This summer I walked down the hill from my trailer to the HFork nearly every
night to try slight variations of a "muskrat and partridge" size 18 on the
evening rise ... basically EVERY fish I could cover with a good drift and a
good "float" took ... but getting a float that lasted more than a single
fish or even a few casts without one is something I never achieved ....
exactly the kind of challenge that drives one both nuts and back the vise,
over and over