I wanted to chime in last night on this but I was tying flies and gotten tired and felt go to bed was my best option. But now it's morning, Hah! I"m awake. Now as I stated in another post, Traditional wet flies were made with left and right flank feathers/quills/Peacock sword and so on. Ther are some exception to the rules. Flank feathers like Wood Duck, specially wood duck that is used in the creation of Catskill dry flies is first of all hard to find pairs in, and second it can become very expensive in doing so. So for the most part the folded wing on wet flies far as flank feathers was created and used. I am doing the folded method for RW'S Dark Hendrickson wet flies. For the reason I just mentioned. The second reason which applies for some was just laziness. Todays modern tyesrs that you have seen attempted to tie wet flies with flank do not know how to do this at all. Mainly do to lack of information. Tyers like Allan and RW that are very knowledgable knows a lot of history and true stories. These two are exceptions to the rule and are not what I call your normal every day fly tyer. Most of todays fly tyers are not armed with the history or have seen any educatonal or instructional videos on wet fly tying. There are some videos but a lot of the tyers and or shops even know this. Also wet fly tying has been a forgotten art and the industry has pushed it away. These flies as your all aware require practice, patience a some techniques to tie one that is truly pretty.

Second the Alexandria is a good exception to the rule, keep in mind if this fly is tied correctly the wing will be tied with Left and Right peacock sword quill segments. So in my eye it truly does follow the rule of left and right quill segments/flank feathers. Just my two cents worth for this this moment in time.

Andy B