Are Wingless Wets Versatile?

[Soft-hackle]

Here's one well-known Fisherman/Writer who thinks so. This well written and informative article is one I thought I'd merely share here for general information. I find, in my experience, Mr. Tapply to be be pretty much on the mark. You may not entirely agree with Tapply, but the article IS informative and interesting.

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/feature ... /part1.php

Mark

[William Anderson]

Mark, I have a couple of Tapply's books and find him well versed and straight forward. I remember this article, but it's fresh to me today re reading it. As an overview, with a nice economy of words he covers the subject very well. There is much to elaborate on, but not much to improve in this brief article. Thanks for posting this. I'll share an experience from this weekend when I sign on later.

[Mike Connor]

It's a pretty good article as far as it goes. But there is no mention of "go-to" flies or anything like that. Collectively, various soft hackles are indeed extremely versatile but you have to choose and fish them properly. ( he gives some excellent descriptions of usage there). You could set up a small collection of generic flymphs and such which would work in many cases when chosen and fished appropriately. But for somebody who has never done it this is not an easy matter. The great thing about woolly worms and woolly buggers is that there is really no way to fish them wrongly, they will work fairly well no matter how you fish them and even better if you fish them well. The same does not apply to soft hackles, or at least not to the same degree. They work on different principles, although some flymphs may be similar to some extent. There are very many factors and imponderables involved. I know of no way to teach somebody even a small part of what is involved very quickly. Indeed, I don't think it is possible at all. Just mentioning a few fly patterns is not going to help much.

[hankaye]

Soft-hackle, Howdy;

Mark, it's good to see you posting.
A very nice article, timely in it's arrival here on the board.
I may have read it before somewhere, it felt familur as I read it.
dub-ya was right in that it is a compact work what with so much
information packed into a short article such as it is.
Thanks for posting it. I'll have to re-read it several times to gather
the fullest extent of information from it.

hank

[redietz]

I miss that guy. His story at the back of American Angler about the "last trip" he took with his father had me in tears.

I miss his father, too. I grew up with Tap's Tips.

[chase creek]

Thanks, Mark. Very good overview, printed it out for my "reference notebook".

Bob - glad you mentioned that. Tap's Tips was the first thing I turned to in the magazine, even before I started fly fishing. Also read the "Last Trip" piece - got a pretty good lump in my throat after reading that.

[gingerdun]

Mark,
Thank you so much for bringing this article to our attention. I am looking forward to reading more by Mr. Tapply.

Lance