What makes a pattern a pattern...

[Kirk Dietrich 0]

...all you'd have to do is train a monkey to tie woolly buggers and you could catch anything from carp to tuna. Then you could spend all those extra hours doing something useful like starring in pornographic videos or farting.

 

I'm gonna have to start tying Wooly Buggars, always thought being a porn start could be fun although with my body I'd more likely have to work the cameras...

 

Oh, did you hear Page's newest pattern: Page's Big Eye Wooly Buggar.

 

Kirk

[Wavey1988 0]

If something's a good idea, someone's bound to have done it before

[Will K 0]

Very interesting ideas. I think, flies have been round so long, and so many people tie, that there are very few truely unique approaches. I'd argue that Bob Pop for example is a hugely unique tier who created some amazingly awesome SW flies, which have trickle down impact on fresh water ties and you could even say played a huge roll in really pushing the use of Epoxy and acrylics to the moon... But in the same breath, I am sure there are folks tying flies that could be described as variations of Bob's flies, but in reality, were evolutions of their own accord.

 

There are a few flies I tie that I evolved over a long time fishing with friends. I'd tie one up, we'd fish, some one would be using the fly or I would be, we'd catch some fish, I'd decide somethign needed tweaking and get at it again.

 

One is what a friend named "the Little Red Nymph". It's a rusty dubbed body and thorax with olive hackle for the tail, perch flashabou for rib, and olive hackle for the wing case, which is folded back from the head and trimmed for legs. It's called the Little Red Nymph becuase I forgot I'd "created it" and given a buddy a few... we were fishing and he was killing it, I asked what he was using and he said: "the Little Red Nymph" you gave me... So the name stuck. I'm sure there are a million other fies like it and that it's really a variation, but at least in our little circle, it's a unique fly pattern we all enjoy fishing. The other I call the Ugly Damsel, which evolved out of a very simple craw fish fly that's basically a wooly buger with a split tail made of long saddle hackle fibers or short maribou fibers and with a turkey feather wing case. it went through many evolutions and became what I call the Ugly Damsel. Great little fly. that fly evolved over years and years... then last year randomly searching google images for sculpins I found a sculpin fly tied by either larry Dahlberg or Dave Whitlock (cant remember now) that was practically the same dang fly. I'm pretty sure those guys would have come up with it before me given that they have tied a lot longer than I, and I started creating the fly in my late teens and early 20's - I'm 38 now. So technically I should probably just call it a sculpin.. But with all my time and history, I keep calling it the Ugly Damsel.

 

My point - there's two flies that certainly could be called variations, but which evolved 100% on their own... Which gives them a sense of individual spirit, that I feel, makes a fly a pattern. I've attached a pic of each of the flies above.

 

for example, the Dark and Light Cahill's are each a pattern, which are variations of catskill style dry flies. Just my thoughts on this while procrastinating today...

[Peterjay 0]

...all you'd have to do is train a monkey to tie woolly buggers and you could catch anything from carp to tuna. Then you could spend all those extra hours doing something useful like starring in pornographic videos or farting.

 

I'm gonna have to start tying Wooly Buggars, always thought being a porn start could be fun although with my body I'd more likely have to work the cameras...

 

Oh, did you hear Page's newest pattern: Page's Big Eye Wooly Buggar.

 

Kirk

 

You'd better watch out Bro - if Page gets wind of that remark, she'll be on the next plane to N.O., looking for you with a dull hacksaw blade in her hand. I've never seen you, but I've seen plenty of Page, and unless you carry a gun, your ass is grass. I used to take subtle jabs at her in my column, and the guys at the fly shop kept warning me that I was gonna wind up in a chum slick if I didn't watch my step. I might not be the smartest guy on the planet, but I was smart enough to make myself scarce when she was around.

[Piker20 0]

 

My point - there's two flies that certainly could be called variations, but which evolved 100% on their own... Which gives them a sense of individual spirit, that I feel, makes a fly a pattern. I've attached a pic of each of the flies above.

 

 

Think you're getting toward hitting the head of what I was aiming at. The collective WE sit at a vice and play with materials and what we have at hand and fish a fly and tweak aspects and produce a fly thats new to us and our circle and we dare to give it a name and then you see a book from 50years ago and there's the damn thing staring at you.

I agree with an earlier post that if someone is selling dozens and dozens of flies they shouldn't name a variant as a pattern and claim any creative glory, but for people tying for themselves and friends the sense of ownership is great and IMO fine to name a 'pattern'.

[Crackaig 0]

While I accept that there are no laid down rules I always make a point to acknowledge a pattern if I consciously draw inspiration from it. For example some time ago I set out to tie some Wickham's Fancy wet flies, then some Invicta wet flies. Thinking about this I came up with the series of flies which have become known as "Rough Flies" (a joke between friends). When I wrote about them in another place, the title was "It started as a Wickham's". Someone else has possibly tied similar before, all I can do is give credit where I know its due.

 

As Izak Newton said "If I have seen further it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants"

 

Cheers,

C.

[nick2011 0]

I thank life in general is just a variation of someone elses,as long as you dont use all the same materials as the original and broadcast it as your own, i would say its okay to call it a variation or to rename it. besides,it is impossible to know all the flys that have been tyed around the world.ive tied many flies right out of my head and later seen similar patterns in other places..i dont thank that means your taking credit for someone elses patterns.

fly tying is like music,if you write a song chances are some one else has wrote one like it before you.

[CoachBob 0]

A few years ago I had some fun with this topic.

You might take a look at the article: "Namesake Flies" at http://www.flyanglersonline.com/features/bobboese/112408.php

[Peterjay 0]

Bob, that's a really insightful piece, although your list of pattern origins barely scratched the surface. After all, it's a well-known fact that the Copper John was first tied in the men's room of the Doaktown, New Brunswick police station. And let's not forget that the Bitch Creek nymph was the work of a Wisdom, Montana hairdresser named Clarence Creek, who named the fly after his wife. It's probably best to leave the history of the venerable woolly bugger alone, other than to mention that its name originally had something to do with a remote sheep ranch and a lonely teenage boy.

[utyer 0]

Maybe we really shouldn't explore too deeply into the origin of the Humpy, or the Double Humph either, but here goes.

 

The pattern was in general use in and around Montana and Wyoming in the early 1960's. Pat Barnes made and sold them by 1943, and he called them Goofus Bugs, much later, the pattern came to be called the Humpy. That name stuck, and is the way the fly is known today. Jack Dennis does take joint credit for the development of the Royal Humpy in 1972, but the pattern existed long before that. The "Horner's Deer Hair Fly" by Jack Horner was developed in the early 40s. A Canadian pattern called the Tom Thumb was a very similar tie as well. Now there are endless variations of the Humpy. When I first started using them in 1965, the Yellow Bellied Humpy was the most popular around Jackson. Olive bodies were the second choice.

 

Tie it will deer hair, elk hair, moose, or foam, its still a Humpy, and its great pattern.

[bowfin47 0]

If you can get your hands on a Streamer Fly Fishing in Fresh and Salt Water (1950)by Col. Joseph D. Bates, you will find that Col. Bates was an advocate of bucktails and that he was responsible (as I remember) for the addition of bead chain to bucktails in order to add more weight and to give a more "jiggy" action. Col. Bates also stated that the addition of the beadchain was not a large enough change in the classic fly for him to add his name to the fly or to otherwise change the fly's name.

 

In the early '80s the FFF Southern Council's tyers were all tying bucktails with larger and larger bead chain. We were all purchasing brass and stainless bead chain in large quantities and complaining that we still needed "more weight." In the mid-80's Tom Schmuecker of Waspi Flies, http://www.wapsifly.com/index.html, designed and manufactured the first lead "dumbbell " eyes to be used to replace the beadchain on our bucktail streamers. These lead eyes were immediately adopted by tyers across the South and much of the rest of the country. At that time, many of those tyers thought that these patterns should be named after Mr. Schmuecker.

 

Several YEARS later, Lefty Kreh wrote an article for Fly Fisherman magazine which touted his long time friend, guide and tyer, Bob Clouser as the originator of the lead-eyed bucktail streamer, i.e. "Clousers". When the issue arrived at my friend Bill's house and he saw this "new pattern", Bill walked over to his bench and asked me how-the-hell could be a "new" pattern when, as he showed me, he had three boxes full of the lead-eyed bucktails - exactly like those in the article, many well fished, on the very day that the article that introduced "Clousers" to the world arrived in his mailbox!

 

A number of years later, I had the opportunity to ask Lefty (in private) why he named this already "well-known and utilized pattern" after Mr. Clouser, and Lefty smiled his little impish smile and said, "I take care of my friends."

 

So in the end, as a tyer, understand that it is NOT important to most folks whether you are the originator of a pattern or not, what seems to matter is who gets it out in print FIRST...

 

I know I've had several original patterns "claimed" by others, including one individual (who we'll just call Mr. Smith)who wrote on his club's web site that he "learned this pattern from a guy that taught it to him at a Southern Council Conclave" and that the pattern worked so well for him that he "renamed after himself!" Yeah... Ya' just can't make this stuff up!