Altering Dry Flies to Wet Flies question

"Larry L" wrote in
:


"Tom Nakashima" wrote

There was a thread awhile back on wet fly fishing. I'm
quite interested in fishing the wet fly.
I was wondering if dry flies could be altered on the spot,
say something like an Adams Dry Fly, altered into a wet fly
by cutting down some of the hackle? Or solutions to make
the dry fly sink without adding shots to the leader or tippet.
thanks,



The properties of the various materials used IS the major element of
fly design.

Dries, if designed well, will have stiff hackles ( to spread the
weight of the fly over more surface area ) and water resisting
materials ( to help maintain floating )

Wets, if well designed, will have soft hackles ( to move with the
current and angler pulsing) and water absorbing materials ( to help it
sink and to add translucence and 'breathing' )


Thus, the answer is "No" A good wet fly is more than just a fly
beneath the surface and a sunken fly designed to float will seldom
compete with a well designed soft hackle or wet




The Usual comes to mind as something that should adapt well for
underwater fishing as a nymph, but as a wet it might be difficult to sink
it.

Try to find a copy of Wet Flies, by Dave Hughes. I think its a pretty
good intro

--
Scott
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"Scott Seidman" wrote



The Usual comes to mind as something that should adapt well for
underwater fishing as a nymph, but as a wet it might be difficult to sink
it.



The "visual' qualities of a Usual DO seem good to base a wet design on ....
but, my point above is that you'd want to change actual materials ...
instead of snowbunny, for instance, you'd look for a more absorbant material
with a similar "look" ..... one of the unique qualities of the snowbunny is
that nature makes his feet stay dry. Come to think of it, I fish a
wet fly early in the Firehole season that uses sparse combed out Antron as a
wing, .... wet it has very much the same apperance as snowbunny, translucent
some sparkle same dun color, but it sucks up water and is soft and wiggly on
top of the visual qualities .

Thanks to Littleton and his suggestion to reread "What the Trout Said" I'm
"keyed on" the difference between design and pattern right now .... it IS a
big difference

For years I've felt and said, to whoever would listen, that good tying
starts by deciding what you want the fly "to do" ...THEN you start looking
for materials ... the common question style "What can I tie with 'name of
material here'?" gets the whole process of quality fly design backwards,
IMHO