Realistic looking flies made of artificial materials are nothing new, they have been around for decades. My father used to have a few that looked just like the real deal.....to us. Fish did not agree. I do not like such flies, it is a bit like spin fishing, but still. Just this year i bought a few very realistic looking bugs and flies, made by one bosnian flytyer, just to see what shall happen. Trouts were not thrilled as they never were when i used too realistic imitations. To be honest i did not use them too much either. It just doesn`t feel right.

However, some of those artificial things are also scented. That is cheating for sure.

Actually it does not take a realistic copy of something to be scented. Years ago, there was a story of some folks over here, who used to keep deer hair imitations of sculpins in plastic bags together with dead sculpins so they would pick up the smell. I would call that a cheating too.

I just remembered, years ago we had a change of rules in our club as soft plastic baits became popular. Ok that's a long time ago, perheaps 2 decades. Anyway people used to take small twisters and put them on hook, calling them "flies". It is always a thin line and sometimes impossible to set. Putting a twister on hook was cheating, but if one used a tail of it as part of the fly i guess it would not be...