I thought I was defining wet flies the way you defined them. That's why I made the point that if you include the nymph then most fish are caught on the wet fly. But maybe I misunderstood what you were saying.
But beyond that, to only fish the soft hackle or flymph
down and across is to short change the fly. On rivers
like the Deschutes or the MacKenzie, the same run that is fished
down across and will have current seams and structure that is
best fished with a dead drift. It is not necessary to add weight
and the dead drifted fly is still fished near the surface. I find
this especially effective in current seams between very fast runouts
and frog water. So I may wind up casting down and across on one cast
and dead drift on the next. And I freely admit that I will fish any fly but my particular joy is the soft hackle or flymph.
I probably don't have much patience with observing other folk's
classification. I try to fish a fly the way that makes the fish happy...then that makes me happy. If I were to only fish in a
manner that someone else thinks is proper of fits a certain definition
then, yes, I would be limiting myself.
Jim Jones
Mark Steudel wrote:
"When you include nymphs, I think wet flies probably account for the vast majority of fish caught in the west." --Jim Jones
Ok so I guess maybe my first question is how are you defining wet flies? I was thinking more in terms of a fly that you are swinging as opposed to dead drifting, which I would put under nymphing. Is this incorrect? And then I guess I have a particular picture of flies that I would swing versus dead drift. Maybe I'm limiting myself ... delinating so much.
I think my classifications come mainly from Tom Rosenbourg's book,
Prospecting For Trout, in which he divides his book into different
sections, streamers, drys, nypmhs, wet flies.
I'd be curious to see how others define ....
