Country Joes’ Dry Fly thread about tippet strength in the Tackle Talk forum and particularly the Orvis hook size/tippet b.s. chart in one of the posts brought to mind something I have pondered from time to time.

Fishing something like a size 16 dry fly on 6lb tippet, can you be sure your fly is fishing the right way up? Maybe it doesn’t matter, in which case are we wasting our time tying flies to match the silhouette of real insects? Do we need to develop more patterns that have the same silhouette no matter which way they land?

Could this be the reason why the dead cert, sure fire, never fail killer pattern lets you down some days?

One thing I am sure about, there is no way a size 16 dry fly will have enough mass to twist a 6lb tippet to allow the fly to sit upright.

Does it matter? Or is there a trick I don’t know about? Perhaps we are all twisting our lines during casting, so some of the time the fly will be right way up.

a size 16 on 6lb tippet?

co polymers these days are very soft. clipped hackles, parachute hackles and upright wings will all help your fly land correctly for flies like griffiths gnat the silhouette (sp?) is the same all the way round the shank, so dont worry about it.

Hi'. The beauty of fishing a hackled dry fly is that there isn't a wrong side up to it. My old mate, one of the best dry fly fishers I have ever met, used to reckon that an up-winged dry fly, using feather wing slips, was a waste of a good cock hackle.
I will amend the first sentence by saying, '---an un-doctored, hackled dry fly--'
TC