are WINGS necessary?

[NJFred]

Silver... no need to apologize. I came to this site to have these sorts of debates... You clearly know a lot more than the causal angler!

This thread alone has a gold mine of information for those anglers interested in improving their game with a deeper more scientific understanding of fly fishing.

I've really enjoyed the discourse here. I have learned some new things/theories... One thing our dialogue does do is to point out why precise imitations aren't necessary yet there are certain triggers... e.g. the bright points of the duns feet on the surface, that can be key to success in imitations.

[AuSableTrophyhunter]

Silver, well reasoned and well stated. If, deer hair comparaduns work, then a hackle in the same configuration is surely as good or perhaps better.
I think this coming Spring, I will test the wngless, hackled dun against the winged, hackled dun imitation.

[NJFred]

Rereading Marinario... he did one of the definitive studies of the topic of "are wings necessary in an imitation".

He found a trout rising to a nice hatch of hendrickson duns. He positioned him self upstream and grabbed the naturals as they floated by. He carefully tore the wings off the hendriksons and put them back into the current seam that was pushing duns over the feeding trout downstream.

While the trout continued to eat the naturals with wings the trout ignored the wingless naturals. Not once, not twice but over 80 times. Not one wingless fly was taken.

Conclusion: When trout are feeding on duns, at least some of them are going to key on the wings. You better be prepared to show, at least with some of the trout, a pattern with wings (comparadun, burnt wings, other) or go without a take.

[Silver Creek]

[quote author=NJFred link=topic=3611.msg28697#msg28697 date=1257292595]
Rereading Marinario.

He carefully tore the wings off the hendriksons and put them back into the current seam that was pushing duns over the feeding trout downstream.

While the trout continued to eat the naturals with wings the trout ignored the wingless naturals.

Conclusion: When trout are feeding on duns, at least some of them are going to key on the wings.
[/quote]

I agree. Wings are important is you are going to imitate a dun. That is what the Marinaro proved. The fish were feeding on relatively quiet water, a current seam and not a riffle. As I've stated in a previous post, that would be an ideal situation of a fish to key on a wing.

But that does not answer the original question of whether wings are needed on classic dries with a palmered hackle that projects vertically just like a wing. My contentions are the fold. First is that the hackle itself provides the vertical profile of a wing especially in turbulent water. Second is that turbulent water is where these flies are used since they are designed primarily for flotation and not imitation. My conclusion is that for the situation the flies are used, you can eliminate the wings and rely on the hackle to provide the wing profile.

[AuSableTrophyhunter]

When you consider the celebrated Adams dry fly, I submit that the misture of grizzly and brown hackle is very suggestive of a WING, without adding a grizzly wing tip or any other WING material.
Further the cid F-Fly or a Petitjean CDC mayfly dry or caddis dry, the CDC is both wing and means of flotation sans hackle or "wing".

[NJFred]

I would certainly agree that hackle, Deer hair of a comparadun, even Chute posts can imitate a wing.