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Should Nymphs & Wets Be Your Go-To App for Fly Tying Techniques?
Nymphs & Wets: Fly Tying Techniques Knots Patterns

Should Nymphs & Wets Be Your Go-To App for Fly Tying Techniques?

June 14, 2017

When you're first picking up fly fishing, or when you want to up your game, knowing how to tie the knots and make the flies is crucial. After all, you want them to look real enough to attract the big one, and that's not always easy to do. Nymphs & Wets does a great job of showing how to do those things, but does it offer enough to make up for the ads and other in-app purchases? Let's find out.

App Feels Like

App Feels Like

App Feels Like

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An overview of Nymphs and Wets

When learning how to fly fish, the most difficult thing for many people is knowing how to tie flies, knots, and various patterns. It's definitely an enjoyable past-time, and can pay off with some great fish, but you've got to get a start somewhere. This free app will get you this beginning, teaching you the most basic nymphs, wets, and other fly fishing essentials. Once you've mastered those, you can unlock more advanced flies, knots, and patterns and learn them as well. The app uses detailed pictures along with great text to help you get things right the first time and every time.

The app to help you learn fly tying techniques, knots, and patterns

The Good

The Good
Learn essential knots and patterns

When you're trying to learn how to tie a fly, you need a good instructor. This app does provide that, with excellent tutorials on how to tie the flies you need, from the most basic to the highly detailed and complex. It offers various categories of techniques, and gives you a healthy selection of different knots and patterns to make use of.

If your eyes aren't very good, each image in the tutorials has a zoom function. You just tap on it, and you get a more detailed, larger view of the image and its accompanying text.

Whether you want to learn the Alexandra, the Black Zulu, or one of dozens of other fly fishing favorites, you'll find them within this app with detailed images and well-written instructions.

The Bad

The Bad
Annoying ads disrupt the experience

Now, the drawbacks. This app makes heavy use of full-screen advertisements. I'm not opposed to monetizing your app, but the developers seem to have gone hog-wild here.

With every screen change, you have to wait at least five seconds for an interactive ad to play before you can tap the X to dismiss it and go where you wanted to be in the first place.

If you're in a hurry to get that fly tied, this isn't the app for you. The ads are annoying enough that I'll be deleting the app from my iPhone in very short order. Then again, maybe I'll forget about fishing and just download one of the games the app keeps pushing on me. Not really, but you get my point.

The Ugly

The Ugly
It's really just a teaser app

Not only does Nymphs & Wets make extensive use of in-app ads, but it tries to monetize in other ways, too. This app has more in-app purchases than I've ever seen in its type before.

First, there's an in-app purchase to get rid of the ads. That's one purchase.

You can also spend money to unlock all of the tutorials in each category.

Finally, the app offers you the option to remove all ads and unlock all of the fly tutorials, for another, heftier charge.

Truthfully, the ads shouldn't pop up so often. Most apps only have them once or twice a day. The lack of much content also makes this app pretty frustrating.

The verdict

The verdict

This just isn't the app for me, and it's a shining example of what happens when developers get a bit too much on the greedy side. There are far too many ads, and not enough free content, to make this worth the space it takes on my iPhone. Truthfully, it's probably a great app, but I just can't get past all of the ads and other in-app purchases to make the most of it.

5.4
OVERALL
Does it well 8.5
User Interface 7
iPhone Integration 5
Lasting appeal 3
Is engaging 3.5
FREE
Nymphs & Wets: Fly Tying Techniques Knots Patterns
Nymphs & Wets: Fly Tying Techniques Knots Patterns
Stojan Pesic