Thanks for the thoughts. While I have a nice Lund boat, I fish out of a kayak these days. The problem that accompanied my post was seeing nice, aggressive fish that wanted to eat but getting a fly to them in the slop without the fly becoming fouled was a challenge. While there were fish on the weed edge, it's hard to leave adult, mature fish in the shallows willing to eat to find the ones on the weed edge.

I took your approach of just cleaning the gunk off of the fly and was rewarded. Casting accuracy was important to hit small openings in the slop. It was still a good day on the water, just wish that I had a fly that shed the gunk better that what I was throwing to them.