BRAINWORKS.FI

With a few well-known exceptions it is generally accepted that a fly emulates food for fish. This is certainly true for nymphs and other small flies which represent larval stages of insects, but note the word emulate, not imitate. When imitation tries to be more or less perfect replica of the original, emulation is content with just reproducing some essential features of it. A good example is Woolly Worm, nowadays Woolly Bugger, and when you tie a mayfly nymph, do you think it is important to have a correct number of tail fibres in your fly? While many patterns that you see in fly fishing magazines do this, I really do not think that fish have the time to count the number of tail fibres of a nymph... The fact is that a fly is not food for fish but tries to deceive fish to think that it is. Therefore, the more time fish has to inspect the fly the less likely it is to be deceived. This is not helped at all if the fly has a rigid stature which is an inherent property of most feather..