Eric,

Great job! Lovely streamer, and enjoyed the history.

Marco,

I agree to an extent. A lot of the flies we tie or buy are designed to appeal to us, and all of the details are probably not needed. As John G. writes in "Good Flies", the finer points of fly tying are probably lost on the fish.

However, Ellis makes the point in "Sunfishes" that even if the fish would be completely satisfied with a little muskrat dubbed on the hook, that most of us would not be satisfied to tie such a fly.

We seem to be more satisfied with flies that are pleasing to the eye. This just seems to be part of our nature. How many folks seem to want a nice shiny painted new auto, when buying one that was galvanized instead of painted would do just as well.

Thus, I like to tie flies that appeal to me...with "bells and whistles" on them.

For me, the short answer is then "no, it does not have to be that beautiful to convince a pea-brain to bite." The long answer is that most of like lovely flies, even if they are not necessary to catch fish, and we will buy them (or tie them as I and others do) even if a simple and sloppily tied fly will work as well or better.

We seem to like nicely finished fly rods too. At least fly rods with nice wrapping, good grades of cork, high quality wooden reel seats, etc., seem to have lots of eye appeal. We will pay more for such a fly rod too. A simple aluminum reel seat, a cast foam grip, and guides that are put on with shrink tubing would be just a functional.

Most of us don't know which fly will work better on any given day, so will usually tie on something we like. Until I learn to read a fishes brain it will stay that way for me. (By the way, I don't have much hope of reading fishes minds...I am still working on understanding how the better half thinks, and seem to have made little progress in understanding that after more than 25 years of marriage.)

Well, anyway, I have not given any kind of an answer, and in fact have just put down some of my notions.

Regards,

Gandolf