Hi everyone, I do design my own flies, mostly nymphs, and the phrase coined by Baden Powell himself comes to mind, "Fish eat insects and other water dwellers. If you are to catch a fish, you must imitate its food". Simply put, natural food sources don't float upside down nor twitch wildly (unless a cripple, and even then it's not THAT pronounced.) I personally don't know how to answer the questions regarding the split shot or anything not-tying related... I'm still learning in all regards, but especially when it comes to the fishing. Still, I find that if catching for keeps, orientation isn't as critical. If C&R-ing, you want the hook down. I often do this with what I call "extenders" for surface tension (on dry flies) or with head-loading on nymphs. The nymph technique is to place the mass of the fly in the eye-half of the hook, evenly distributed around the entirety of the hook's 360*s. I treat eyes as a pivot, with the "pulling" vector being the line to the eye of the hook. That oft helps me understand why a fly "swims" the way it does in water. Water tension is something tricky to master; you have to know the relative density of the substances on the fly, and then work with that to create a good friction in the water. All of the elk-hair in the world won't make a well- tied caddis dry sink... well, unless you are obnoxious about it and have a hair-ball on your line... So I think the qualities of your tying material are as important as the stream itself. Just my $0.02... back to making dinner. Tight lines, Pete
________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the Internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the Web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today!
