Winged Wets.......design based on misunderstanding?

[redietz]

Sorry,
For centuries, the caddis was not deemed important to fly fishing.......

I was under that impression for a long time, but the more I pore over quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore, the less convinced I am. Ronalds included a number of caddis flies in a Fly Fisher's Entomology in 1836; the grannom, aka "greentail", was being imitated at least as far back as 1681 (Chetham highly recommended it), the "shell fly" of the Treatyse in the 1490's was almost certainly a caddis, and even Halford included a whole plate of caddis imitations. I suspect it was the latter gentleman who downplayed caddis flies; they didn't fit too well into his upstream, dead drift theory.