For some reason, the dry fly carries the highest level of appeal for most fly fishermen, even though the wet fly has a lot more appeal for trout.

It seems that there's always been a bone of contention between advocates of the "floaters" and supporters of the "sinkers".

Just give me the fly that works best at any given time. I just want to catch trout.

This is the time of year when many of us are spending time pawing through our fly boxes, finding the patterns which we lack and remembering times astream when certain patterns were dynamite.

A dry fly rides the surface of the stream. When the materials combine stiff hackles and just the right amount of body material, it sits high on the water with an almost cocky attitude.

Its cousin the wet fly is just the opposite. Wet flies work best when they are chewed and mauled by trout teeth. The more battles they have under their best, the more effective they become.

Instead of boldly taunting the trout as the dry fly does, the wet fly either bumps along the bottom of the stream or swims through the various levels. It's a subtle lure and one most of us find most effective.

Some of my favorite "wets" have attained a special place in the fly box. I hate to fish with them because I'm afraid to lose them.

An unthinking backcast can leave them wrapped around a beech tree limb. They can be caught under a stone on the bottom, or wrapped in roots by a hooked trout.

And whether it's wet or dry fly, the good ones seem to have a special, almost unobtainable quality of their own.

Most of us who tie flies (after the "initial" investment) can whip up a fly in a few minutes. Our flies have set patterns and each one should be just like the others of its kind. But each has its own minute differences.

And some seem to perform better than others. Maybe to a trout, who see the world in such a different way than what we do, these tiny differences are magnified.

Action in the water is critical. A fly clamped in a vice might appear the same as its immediate predecessor to our eyes -- but the appearance of a bubble stream behind the wet fly or the wing profile of a proud dry fly means the difference between a confident strike or a pass.

Some patterns which replicate an insect exactly do not work as well as a design which approximates the bug's behavior.

One of the best hatches during the summer on the Genesee River is the varia and potamanthus emergence at dusk and into the night.

I've spent countless hours, season after season, trying to replicate the big light colored duns which emerge like a Polaris missile. Nymphs, wets, emerger patterns have been tried, but only with less than adequate success.

Fly fishermen know when they have a pattern that is right. Almost every feeding trout in the stream will hit it. Refusal after refusal tells us something is wrong, even if we do catch a few.

A fly fisherman stopped into the office the other day and recommended a No. 12 Grey Fox Variant as the answer to the varia hatch.

Now the Grey Fox Variant with its brown, striped hackle wrapped body and thick grizzled wings is a far cry from the light yellow body and almost clear wings of the natural.

But if it will catch trout, I don't care if it looks like an old sock.

You can be sure I'll have a few tied up and ready for the hatch.