It's cheatin' I tells ya!

Nymph? Wet Fly? Just plain cheatin'?

Full disclosure: I have "fly fished" with a "nymph" that was essentially a pink Berkley Grub attached to a hook. By "essentially" I mean that it was just that -- a hook with a skewered grub under an indicator.

It worked damn good; caught fish like mad.

I brought the "bait" along when I was fishing with the boys just in case it got slow and we needed a helping hand. It turns out that everyone (including the guides) ended up fishing grubs for a brief time and had a blast. No regrets. For the record, the boys also did very well using traditional flies.

Okay, now that I've gotten that behind me, I must comment on what I feel is a disturbing trend in fly tying -- artificial bugs. I read in the most recent issue of Fly Tyer magazine about Bug Partz. These are rubber pieces of bugs. You can get legs and other body parts which seem harmless enough but you can also get rubber crayfish. Lash it to a hook and voila, "the most realistic flies ever".

Those aren't flies.

Flies are made from animal detritus. Full stop. Sure, we're gonna add flash and sparkle and wavy soft stuff named after Italian gods but fly tying is deeply rooted in dead animals, thread and hooks. Lashing bug shaped rubber to a hook and calling that a fly!? This is not the stuff of our sport and it's gone too far.

Besides, why would you bother? Why not just head over to Cabelas and grab some plastic bait? They've got all kinds.

The folks over on "Fly Tying New and Old" Blog point an even better solution: Plastic nymph bodies with tungsten embedded in them. Dayam, I say.

Look at these flies I just tied!

For the love of god,where does it end?

I'll tell ya where it ends. Chuckin' treble-hooked Strike Pro Flex Phantoms with an 8 weight Helios.

We must repent! We must turn from this rubber infested future. Wiggly rubber legs? Sure, I'll go for wiggly rubber legs. But when you're stitching rubber to hook like Ahab to the great whale, you've gone too far.

Repent while there's still time.