AH! Great days on the water...the fish blasting a fly until it is literally hanging together with a few threads! I have fished flies that have lost one wing, are coming unwound with tinsel hangin off the body, and have lost most of their body material, and the fish like them even better!
If you ever had a swap where the fly had to be one that already caught a handful of fish, the fly collection would look a lot different than the picture perfect stuff we get sometimes, my guess. Nymphs like GRHE always seem to work better after they have been used and 'roughed up' a bit. I remember reading a book by Lee Wulff where he describes this grey nymph he had developed that was a real fish catcher. It was basically dubbing and hook. He couldn't sell them to flyshops because they didn't look like anything. So to increase his sales and appeal to the eyes of fly anglers, he added eye candy. Didn't add to the fish catching qualities, but it did help sell the fly. Wes Wada Bend, Oregon
