As I was tying a streamer this week, the thought occurred to me while wrapping wire around the shaft: "Hey, wait a minute. Every sick or crippled fish you've ever seen, whether it was out in the wild or in your little 5-gallon aquarium, swam with his head up and his tail dragging. Why aren't you weighting this streamer so that it rides 'tail-down' so that it looks more vulnerable?"

I've been tying flies now for almost a month and a half, so my guess is that I'm not the first person to wonder about this. Is tail-weighting something everyone does, something everyone rejects after they gain eight weeks of experience, something done only on special occasions?