Thats the beastie Jeff, it looks, well, right.
Was it Westlow Mere you fished? It is about 20 mile from where I grew up. If ever you are over that way again let me know I'll put you onto some fishing. Unfortunatly we have a riparian ownership system for water over here. Almost anywhere you want to fish you will have to pay. Generally the better the fishing the more you will pay. Even with a very fat cheque book some water will not be available. A few years ago Nick Faldo (the golfer) bought the fishing rights to a length of the River Test. If my memory serves he bought a mile and a half, which worked out at ?375 per foot. However, if you do your research there is good free or inexpensive fishing available.

Often I come across the myth that these soft hackles move in the water. If you fish them dead drift the hackle has nothing to move it, so will drift open like the spokes of an umbrella. If you swing them then they will collapse against the body of the fly. Movement of the hackle is something I've never been able to see when I have observed these flies in the water.

Some years ago I was fortunate enough to obtain a few of the original hooks, over 100 years old. What surprised me was the length of the shank. By modern standards they would be 1 or 2x long shanks. No wonder the illustrations showed them tied short. Of course hooks were much less available in the days of Edmonds, Lee, Pritt and Stuart. They had to use what they had available. Hence they tied small flies on quite large (long) hooks. This, I suspect, is the origin of the "tying short" of these flies. Of course there is much speculation, to know we would have to get into the minds of the original tiers. What would they make of the fly tying materials of today? I very much doubt that there was more to it than making something, from what was readily available to them, that put food on the table. Today we have the leisure time to consider them more.
Cheers,
Alan.