Ever wonder why there are so many different fly 'patterns'.

Think about it.

You have all that printed material listing lots of them. I won't hazard a guess as to how many, certainly several hundreds of thousands, though.

You have the internet, certainly the largest repositiory of fly variety worldwide.

Then at the smallest level, you have the fly tyers like us. Some of us tie 'by the book', but many of us, from what I've read here, often if not almost always, change, fiddle with, or adjust continually as we tie. For whatever reason, be it materials on hand, local knowledge, or just whimsy.

The variations of flies out there are almost limitless and grwoing by the minute.

Yet, we hear very few tales of trajedy at the vise. More often, what we hear is that someones wild flight of fancy, something done for just the fun of it, catches fish, and often does so quite well.

But if you read some of the many volumes in print, or articles online, you'll get so called experts that will tell of the importance of color, the importance of matching the fishes diet, the importance of size first, color is most important, the fish look at shape first, you know, so you need to tie flies to match that first. No, no, it's presentation that's what matters.

None of these folks seem to agree about it. When you read threads here it's pretty obvious that there are several, if not hundreds, of different approaches to things like fly selection.

What is obvious is that they ALL work. While it may occur occasionally, few of the authors of published accounts are likely to have just made it all up. They believe that what they write is correct, based on their experiences. They are probably, almost certainly, right about it.

The good folks that post their methods of fishing and selecting flies here are also correct. That some few are more or less experienced is irrelevant. No one is likely to write about a negative experience, so if someone says they caught a fish doing a certain thing or using a certain fly, I tend to believe them.

I have a fly patern book that lists 1500 fly patterns, and I'm sure that none of them got into that book without at least catching a few fish. I could be wrong about that, but I don't think so. I've met Mr. Kaufman, he seems like a diligent fellow.

I have an old book, lists around 2200 patterns. Again, all have had some success catching fish, or they probably would not have come to Mr. Leonard's attention.

And, there are hundreds of these kinds of books. While many list similar, or sometimes many of the same patterns, that's still a lot of different flies.

I've seen a new fly of the week here for years. It's likely that each one has caught fish for the person who submitted it, and many of them have caught fish for me.

Just being logical about it, what does this tell us?

Logically, many flies will catch fish. Logically, the fish don't decide which fly to eat, since it's the angler that chooses to fish it. (I know "let the fish decide"-nice idea, but not doable in a true sense). Logically, whichever criteria an angler uses to select a fly is valid when it works. We've already shown that there is wide difference in angler selection criteria, and yet all of them seem to work.

From the evidence, and the amount of evidence supporting this is unsurmountable, it matters not at all which fly you choose as long as you do choose it based on some set of criteria that matters to you.

What appears to matter most is that you fish the fly. Not what fly you fish.

Buddy