Our conditioning is often heavily influenced by the fashions of the day, as can be witnessed here - it has become fashionable amongst us, all be it a minority in the global scheme of things to delve into history and seek out the old patterns of spiders and wingless wets. Is this because we are dissatisied with more modern methods, are we simply bucking the trend, are we setting our own trend or are we simply touched by a sense of our place in the continium of fly fishing and have an aspiration to keep alive the traditions of our forefathers. Is it even more simply that we are touched and excited by the joy of tying and fishing with patterns that demand natural materials - plastic is plastic, wire is wire but hackles from game birds are things of immense beauty, each feather a complex arrangement of hues and shades.
I have a little theory that the advent of the internet has provided us with so much easily accessed information on techniques, materials and ideas that many anglers are suffering from overexposure and many are actively seeking a return to a more fundamentalist approach and such as us have perceived that wingless wets might bring much pleasure and much success and much simplicity to our fishing.
.... and then we discover that fishing wingless wets effectively is as complex or even more complex than other method's and that those simple looking p&o's etc... are far from the simple creations that we envisaged.
Are you being conditioned ???
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