In my humble opinion... no statements, just a personal perspective:
Each gamefish / situation calls for a different tactic. I fish mostly steelhead in rivers and stripers in coastal salt waters, with some trout and warmwater mixed in.
For steelies I prefer to use a barbless unweighted single fly that I "swim" through the nuances of a river's structure using the line to direct the presentation to tease the prized chrome torpedo to come to the fly, rather than bring the fly to the fish on a drift. Dry line is the dream, but sinktips make winter realistic. Steelhead is borderline religion to me and indicators don't fit in that perspective although it does for many and I won't persecute anyone for it, other than perhaps an occasional tampon joke :devil: In fact there are many gear guys on the river I respect deeply for their skill and concern about wild steelhead.
For stripers, indicators would not even come to mind due to the situation. Some folks criticize weighted eye flies yet use a daisy chain of flies on dropper leaders. I find this ironic but none of my business. The salt is a churning brine of bloody fish killing survival and that's without including fishermen! Anyway, I like a single barbless fly and find it very effective based on everything else you do in addition to the fly choice. I have no qualms about using weighted eyes on a fly but my reasons are for presentation reasons similar to bonefishing. Multiple flies seems a little over the top though, I don't practice the sabiki method
The same goes for pacific salmon in the ocean, rip or be ripped is the rule out there. SWFF fishing is dog-eat-dog predatory pursuit for me, there is no room for purism in the ocean food chain as I see it, to each his/her own. Again I fish alongside anglers using methods and a good angler is a good angler regardless of the methods used.
For FW bass I use topwater poppers, sliders, baitfish patterns and grubby leechy crawfishy stuff, anything goes. It's not serious business, no tournaments for me - just a load of fun in the lilly pads with exploding bucketmouths and blistering bronzebacks.
For trout... I see the reason for the debate but I'm really not worthy of participating. I am not much of a trout angler but the FF world is primarily trout and it does appear as if the majority goes with the indicator approach especially if one judges by what's shown on TV programs lately. The trout FFing I've done in the past has been (a) messing around with hoppers and dries on cold freestone streams (b) fishing small dries or emergers on New England ponds (c) dry and nymph dropper rig, a variation of the indicator but the indicator catches fish (d) streamers for the shoreline cruisers at dawn. Certainly the dry/nymph dropper is the most effective in terms of picking fish out of pockets in a stream but I wonder if this is due to convenience and results-oriented thinking and not pursuit of the real essence of the sport? I wouldn't know. I've caught the biggest fish using streamers very early in the morning, had the most fun flipping hoppers under willow trees in cold north country streams, felt the satisfaction of float tubing to fish rising to gnats on Thoreau's Walden pond, but without a doubt caught more fish using a dressed dry fly with a flourocarbon dropper to a small nymph.
If trout were my religion, I could give my opinion. Although I want to pursue trout angling to a more serious degree in my lifetime, but I can't at this point say whether indicators are or are not standard fare. I guess in the end, it down to the same blurb that we started on...
"to each his/her own" within the limits of the law. :chuckle:
except now my fingers are cramped from typing!