Hi Andy B,
Yes, the variety in styles for wet flies is huge. I should have done one up like a Cahill wet fly, and a wingless palmer would be good too. I sort of think of the following "groupings" when it comes to wets:
1) spiders (reversed spiders would fit here)
2) flymphs (a tailed spider in my mind)
3) wingless palmers (long tailed, tag tailed, or not tailed; bumbles?)
4) winged palmers (I think of this as the Invicta-style)
5) winged wets (what most people think of for "standard winged wet fly")
The Winged wets then get into styles of winging, and other proportions, such as
5.a) Cahill wets (the wings look sufficiently different on this)
5.b) Tummel wets (the overall proportions and hook use make this it's own category really) From Donald's site, I think one could group a number of UK styles into some sort of "theme" to form a category.
5.c) Peter-Ross category; This being a thoraxed profile rather than a tapered bodied shaped, but now I could be splitting hairs.
Then there's hair wings of course. And so on. There comes a point when one is no longer dividing things into "categories" but rather just dividing things because something between two flies is different. Is adding a rib to a spider sufficient to make a new category? I don't think so, but since adding a tail changes the shape, I personally think that warrents a "category change" (spider vs flymph). Not everyone has to agree with that as a criterion for a division of course; and my wondering whether or not a "Peter Ross" is a different category than a "Greenwell's Glory" because of the body profile differences means I'm not even consistent. Does a collar hackle vs a throat or beard mak
And, when it comes to the proportional changes (standard to Tummel for example), there can always be examples that are somewhere in between. Even collar vs palmered hackls gets ambiguous when you consider Stewart's spiders, with the collar hackle extended 1/2 way down the body? Is it a long collar or a short palmer? Is it a "new category"? Does it matter?
Anyway, wet flies have been around for a long time, and so it's not surprising there are so many different ways to produce them. I find them a lot of fun to fish, partly for this reason I think.
- Jeff