Understanding softhackle, flymph, spiders

[Redfin]

I guess I’m a bit uneducated on some wet fly terminology it seems. I been getting back into fly fishing and looking up where I left off at wet flys.
Well. Come to find out. What I was calling n tying wet fly was actually soft hackles. So I now understand the difference's between a winged actual wet fly and my soft hackles.
But I came to things called flymphs and spiders.
Can someone help me understand those or this terminology? Flymph to me looks like a buggy nymph and I spider looks like my soft hackles… could use some clarification.

 

[dudemanspecial]

Spiders are an English term for soft hackles. Same thing.

Edit:To my knowledge, the spider term specifically references the soft hackle style fly with a thin thread or lightly dubbed body with a soft hackle collar, like a partridge and orange or similar, not the super buggy soft hackles like a Bird of Prey caddis or similar.

Flymph is an imitation to look like an emerging nymph. Its just a nymph pattern with a thick collar / thorax to look like a budding wingcase.

 

[albatross]

Take your soft hackle, maybe tie it on a lighter wire hook, dress it with floatant, and fish it in the film = flymph = floating nymph. An imitation like this works for an emerger or a cripple pretty well.

 

[Tiogadog]

It is a few years old now but Dave Hughes book Wet Flies is pretty informative on the subject.

 

[falcon]

But they all dance around when describing what a flymph is but it really doesnt matter. Then you have a Allen McGee who indicates anything with a hen or game bird feather is a soft hackle. Not that they are wrong but there seems to be too much latitude.
The Dave Hughes book is the best book on the subject. I like it better than the Syl Nemes books.

 

[Redfin]

It is a few years old now but Dave Hughes book Wet Flies is pretty informative on the subject.

That book seems pretty hard to find. I was looking for one. Thanks for the reminder. I need to get back looking. Looking for 2nd edition.

 

[gfenlikestolosepasswords]

Take your soft hackle, maybe tie it on a lighter wire hook, dress it with floatant, and fish it in the film = flymph = floating nymph. An imitation like this works for an emerger or a cripple pretty well.

I need to be pedantic (which is probably expected of me, but it doesn't mean I enjoy doing it anymore):

"Flymph" is from Pete Hidy coined to describe Jim Liesering's style of non-winged wet flies. Liesering's flies were specifically tied with dubbing loops (generally prepared ahead of time) where he matched the thread colour and fur to meet specific requirements. One of the reasons is that to harmonize the two and present a fly that appears translucent rather than a dubbed body where the thread is hidden and plays little effect to the overall appearance. He would fish them in all levels of the water column, not just the surface film and not just with the Lift.

Liesering also specifically calls for fine wire hooks, and did not weight his flies. (neither did Hidy nor does Syl Nemes).

Spiders or North Country Spiders are a sparse body fly, often only silk, with a turn or two of upland gamebird hackle. These two are expected to be fine wire hooks and fished upstream not unlike a dry fly. The North Country refers to the northern part of England, but not Scotland.

A wingless wet fly is a "soft hackle" versus the old school winged wets we don't see much of anymore.

And any fly not fished on the surface is a wet fly. Becuase it's wet, dig?

The Hughes book is pretty good and goes into details for a lot of this, including sections on the above plus Polly Rosborough all furs and Lafontaine caddis patterns. Its now got a second printing, and yet somehow I own two copies of the original. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[moorestowngreg]

You all convinced me and I just ordered a copy I found on ABE books

 

[Tups]

I also recommend the Dave Hughes book. There are others of course. Rather than list them, here are some photos.

 

[shortrod]

gfen's post is very accurate. I will add a couple of things.

Pete Hidy created the "flymph" term for a fly that represented an insect that was no longer a nymph but wasn't quite an adult yet. The more used term today for the same thing is "emerger".

While Hidy started with Liesering's flies, he developed his own style. Hidy style flymphs retain the use of a pre-formed translusent fur-on-silk body and the use of hen hackle. But Hidy style flies have a ****ed tail and have the haclkle wrapped over the thorax are of the fly.

 

[shortrod]

Spiders or North Country Spiders are a sparse body fly, often only silk, with a turn or two of upland gamebird hackle.

Syl Nemes listed 14 flies in his book "The Soft Hackled Fly". 10 of them are as described above if you include the variants that add a fur thorax. None of those have "Spider" as part of the name. Oddly, 1 of the 14 does have "Spider" as part of its name: March Brown Spider. It has a hare's ear fur body with a gold tinsel rib.

 

[shakey]

And don’t forget weamers!
That is a cross between a streamer and a wet fly.
Although, it can also be a streamer used as a wet fly, or , a wet fly used as a streamer.

 

[Redfin]

A weamer… never heard of her… thanks I will check that out. Sounds interesting!

 

[redietz]

Syl Nemes listed 14 flies in his book "The Soft Hackled Fly". 10 of them are as described above if you include the variants that add a fur thorax. None of those have "Spider" as part of the name. Oddly, 1 of the 14 does have "Spider" as part of its name: March Brown Spider. It has a hare's ear fur body with a gold tinsel rib.

Although Nemes deserves some credit for bringing wingless wets to the attention of American anglers, he really didn't know very much about them when he first started writing about them. For example, he believed that the Partridge and Orange was invented in Paul Young's shop in Detroit. (It goes back at least to 18th century England, and some writes believe it was brought to England during the Roman occupation.)

He educated himself by the time he wrote some of his later books, but the linguistic damage had already been done with renaming North Country wet flies as "soft hackles."

The meaning of the term "spider" has broadened somewhat in England in recent years, but originally only referred to Stewart's style of wet fly where the feather was wrapped around the thread and semi-palmered.

The term "wet fly" is a retronym (like "land line telephone") that didn't exist before the invention of the dry fly, and is often used to denote flies in the style that existed before dries -- i.e. it doesn't always include nymphs or streamers.

Going back even further, before dries there were "flies" (those that had wings), "hackles" (wingless wets) and "palmers" (obvious meaning, but the word meant caterpillar before is meant a fly with hackle the whole length of the body.)

Language is always evolving.

 

[Redfin]

I finally got a copy of wet flys by dave Hughes.
I wanted the newer version but couldn't find one. So i got the first edition.