Fly appearance, physics and hydrodynamics

[redietz]

Get a little fish slime , decaying moss, or dirt on your wet fly. Especially after it is water logged. I bet those barbules press against the abdomen at the slightest current caused pressure.

Not so much in my experience. I used to believe that, but have looked often enough to believe otherwise. It takes a fair mount of current pressure to collapse them. Of course if you're pulling the fly hard upstream quickly, they will collapse, but as soon as you let up a bit, they fluff right out.

It takes very little current pressure to compress them. In my experience.

I believe you fish faster streams than I. Where I tend to get a lot of moss on my flies is in pretty slow moving spring creeks.

[Bazzer69]

Fly that dead drift show little or no moment with their hackles etc. But my observation on several fast moving water is that most of the aquatic insects that hatch In open water float to the surface very slowly with little or movement, I guess that’s why dead drifting a nymph pattern is so deadly. There are exceptions to this of course, but generally not
Barry