Beautiful flies vs. Not So Beautiful

On Tue, 2 May 2006 13:07:17 -0700, "Tom Nakashima"
wrote:

I just received my order of flies for the McCloud River that are well tied,
but not the greatest in aesthetics. I've paid 55 cents per fly, which I
thought was a pretty good price, and they do match the patterns I wanted. I
recently saw some very nice tied patterns at $2.80 per fly, but they were
near perfect and very aesthetically pleasing. I've never fished with
beautiful flies before, but was wondering if they do make a difference in
appearance to trout?
-tom


A fly shop two towns over from me went out of business several years
ago. I knew the guy that ran it and jumped at the chance to buy some
of the "realistic" flies that he had for sale. I bought a bunch of
them for about $0.75 apiece, and some Water Wisp flies for about the
same amount. I was so very pleased in my purchase of these flies and
couldn't wait to try them on my favorite stream.

Long story short: The Water Wisp flies were absolutely useless.
Never had a rise to them *all season*. The realistic flies did not
perform any better that the hack jobs that *I* tie. So, I can say
from experience that it ain't what they look like necessarily.

I believe presentation is the key to successful fly fishing,
regardless the discipline (nymphing, wets, dries, streamers).

I once caught a 20 inch land locked salmon that had a fly in its jaw.
I removed it and put it on my patch. About an hour later I tied on
that fly and took fish after fish after fish. The fly was beat up
beyond recognition at the end of that day. It became my "lucky fly",
and I only used it when I was getting skunked. It *never* failed. I
eventually lost it to a fish that beat me, and I regret to this day
that I did not reverse engineer the fly to see how it was tied. I
have tied similar ones, but nothing that had the success of that fly.

Dave