jdubya
10-15-2006, 05:45 PM
By Mike Hogue
One of the great challenges to fly designers is creating new patterns.
At last count ( which I am sure is far from compete since the book is
several years old) there are some 64,000 different fly patterns.At this
point most of us would honestly believe that every single pattern that
has ever been developed now exists and that well there is simply no
reason what so ever to think about creating a new pattern.
Fly tying legend Jack Gartside tells me that over his entire career he
thinks he comes up with 2 maybe three good ideas a year and he thinks
of all the innovations be has developed something like only maybe 10-20
that are really good. I would tend to agree with Jack. I believe that I
may have created about 10-15 patterns I consider to be top notch, the
others are okay. Some are just fashion and some are particular to a
circumstance that may never occur again. Think of the Pa 17 year locust
hatch and that maybe one of the best clues. I mean if you only get to fish
the hatch once in17 years, that is a really long time between instars
and molts before you even get a chance to see if the idea is any good.
Inspiration can come from a variety of sources. New books, new
materials, new products are just a few of the places we all get ideas. Sharing
ideas and then transmitting these new ideas into patterns and
derivatives is still another way. Observing the real world is another choice and
still another is cross breeding ideas. I love this one. Take the wing
from here, the head from there and the tail from another place and
pretty soon something totally original emerges. Think Mr. Potato Head and
you get the idea.
Mixing colors is sometimes fun just to see what happens. I have
wrapped, then counter wrapped and then overwrapped to see what might happen. A
good example is attaching mylar to something. Against black it becomes
pearl olive black peacock, against brown it can be a pearlized pheasant
tail. New? Just different.
The bead craze and the cdc craze were almost the most funny of all.
"Designers" put a gold bead in front of traditional patterns or took
traditonal patterns and substituted cdc for hackle and what you had was "Mr.
X's Goldbead or CDC thing - a-ma-bob". New? Hardly. That's not
innovation, it is adapting ideas. Cave's wobbler spoon is another. Making a
spoon isn't new. Although using tubing and epoxy to make a fly rodder's
version is very innovative.
One place we never look at is lures. Why? They won't hurt ( not unless
we grab that mass of treble hooks). Some really cool lures have been
created of late. Using underwater pictures one clever lure maker put
those to foil and epoxied them to bodies......the result and extremely
deadly exact duplicate. Wow, now that is cool. Just how can I use that to
make flies? Don't have a clue. I do know some deer hair tyers that took
traditional plugs and made them into hair bugs. They grabbed the
wobblers, plugs and carved deer hair out, into a new shape.
The past 25 years of fly tying has been very innovative and I can only
hope the next 20 are equally productive. I'd like to find the next gold
bead or CDC. If you find it let me know. Are we getting better? Not
sure....... it is for sure more interesting. My latest craze is reading
really old patterns to see if someone has been asleep and forgotten about
something or overlooked one or 2 great ideas. Trouble is stuff like
rails and pewitts are not only illegal some don't exist any more.
One of the great challenges to fly designers is creating new patterns.
At last count ( which I am sure is far from compete since the book is
several years old) there are some 64,000 different fly patterns.At this
point most of us would honestly believe that every single pattern that
has ever been developed now exists and that well there is simply no
reason what so ever to think about creating a new pattern.
Fly tying legend Jack Gartside tells me that over his entire career he
thinks he comes up with 2 maybe three good ideas a year and he thinks
of all the innovations be has developed something like only maybe 10-20
that are really good. I would tend to agree with Jack. I believe that I
may have created about 10-15 patterns I consider to be top notch, the
others are okay. Some are just fashion and some are particular to a
circumstance that may never occur again. Think of the Pa 17 year locust
hatch and that maybe one of the best clues. I mean if you only get to fish
the hatch once in17 years, that is a really long time between instars
and molts before you even get a chance to see if the idea is any good.
Inspiration can come from a variety of sources. New books, new
materials, new products are just a few of the places we all get ideas. Sharing
ideas and then transmitting these new ideas into patterns and
derivatives is still another way. Observing the real world is another choice and
still another is cross breeding ideas. I love this one. Take the wing
from here, the head from there and the tail from another place and
pretty soon something totally original emerges. Think Mr. Potato Head and
you get the idea.
Mixing colors is sometimes fun just to see what happens. I have
wrapped, then counter wrapped and then overwrapped to see what might happen. A
good example is attaching mylar to something. Against black it becomes
pearl olive black peacock, against brown it can be a pearlized pheasant
tail. New? Just different.
The bead craze and the cdc craze were almost the most funny of all.
"Designers" put a gold bead in front of traditional patterns or took
traditonal patterns and substituted cdc for hackle and what you had was "Mr.
X's Goldbead or CDC thing - a-ma-bob". New? Hardly. That's not
innovation, it is adapting ideas. Cave's wobbler spoon is another. Making a
spoon isn't new. Although using tubing and epoxy to make a fly rodder's
version is very innovative.
One place we never look at is lures. Why? They won't hurt ( not unless
we grab that mass of treble hooks). Some really cool lures have been
created of late. Using underwater pictures one clever lure maker put
those to foil and epoxied them to bodies......the result and extremely
deadly exact duplicate. Wow, now that is cool. Just how can I use that to
make flies? Don't have a clue. I do know some deer hair tyers that took
traditional plugs and made them into hair bugs. They grabbed the
wobblers, plugs and carved deer hair out, into a new shape.
The past 25 years of fly tying has been very innovative and I can only
hope the next 20 are equally productive. I'd like to find the next gold
bead or CDC. If you find it let me know. Are we getting better? Not
sure....... it is for sure more interesting. My latest craze is reading
really old patterns to see if someone has been asleep and forgotten about
something or overlooked one or 2 great ideas. Trouble is stuff like
rails and pewitts are not only illegal some don't exist any more.