What is an original

[flytire 0]

That's the one. Though it's Wissahickon.

 

"M" is too close to "N" on the keyboard

[Philly 0]

Understand. I flunked typing in high school.

[rstaight 0]

The only way I can seem to remember what river in in or near Philadelphia is to give a goofy name in my mind.

 

So for Wissahickon I think of wash-a-chicken.

[Philly 0]

You could think of it as "catfish stream" which is the translation of the Lenape word “wisameckham,” it is derived from. Though in all the years I've fished it, since I was 5, I've never seen a catfish caught. The creek has several dams on it where it runs through Philly and they've been there since the early 1800's when various mills lined the creek. So maybe the catfish died out.

[Mark Knapp 0]

Looked at your knife site, Mark.

I have to agree with those who say, "There's only so many ways to make a usable sharp edge and attach it to a handle." Your blades look good, but they're just knives.

Your handles, on the other hand, are truly beautiful!

 

I like the 1911 system, too.

 

Thanks Mike

[salmobytes 0]

A lot of these are original, by any reasonable standard or definition of original. Some of them are good flies too!

 

https://montana-riverboats.com/?robopage=Flies/Sandy-Pittendrigh/&layout=slideshow

[tjm 0]

A lot of these are original, by any reasonable standard or definition of original. Some of them are good flies too!

 

https://montana-riverboats.com/?robopage=Flies/Sandy-Pittendrigh/&layout=slideshow

Sandy, are the flies on your site by other tiers originals tied by them?

Your flies are not only originals in terms of pattern but often in methods and materials as well. I always enjoy seeing your inventiveness.

[Mark Knapp 0]

A lot of these are original, by any reasonable standard or definition of original. Some of them are good flies too!

 

https://montana-riverboats.com/?robopage=Flies/Sandy-Pittendrigh/&layout=slideshow

 

Yes they are! Quite innovative.

[salmobytes 0]

My flies are the only ones tied by me. The rest are all actually tied by the attributed author. I own a few of those flies but not many. A large portion were from Tom Morgan's personal collection. I maintained Tom's website for almost a decade and got to know him pretty well. And I photographed all his flies. And then it grew from there. People visit my website and then (occasionally) offer to send me flies they've collected, from well-known tiers. I photograph the flies and then send the flies back.

 

Of the flies I do actually own (Frans Pott, Jack Beohme, Pat Barnes and a few others) they are all neatly packed away in small boxes and I only get to actually see them once a year or so. The online images I see all the time.

[tjm 0]

It's a nifty resource, thanks for it.

[JSzymczyk 0]

you could take a bit of whatever material, tie it on whatever hook with whatever thread, and it would be "original".... People have been tying bits of junk to hooks for at least a few thousand years. You can be fairly confident that whatever you come up with, someone has done something very very similar to it. Success matters, and we all have our own version of what is successful. Your little white moth pattern caught a bunch of grayling, and you can't argue with that. From the design of the fly, on a reasonably light tippet, it would cast like a wrecked helicopter and cause endless aggravation with twisted tippet to a lot of fishermen. I remember a few afternoons catching grayling on a little river in Alaska on flies that were so chewed up and worn out from so many fish that they didn't resemble much of what they "originally" were. Would a known pattern like a White Wulff have worked equally as well as your "original" Spruce Budworm moth? Maybe not. Maybe yes. Unless something is truly, unarguably DIFFERENT, and that difference is easy to understand and available to people, AND solves a problem (or brings an action, presentation quality, or some other attractiveness) which has so far been unsolved, it's not really worth the effort to claim "originality".... Rapala floating minnow (some will argue that other Scandinavians had the same ideas before Laurie Rapala...) ... Mepps Spinner which all other "spinners" have been based on (some will argue Andre Meulnart copied and modified other older designs....) Bumblepuppy streamer (Theodore Gordon himself wrote that he was influenced by other things he had seen, and feathers had been lashed to hooks to PROBABLY emulate baitfish for millenia.....) Nick Creme taking an emerging technology of the time (polymer "plastics") and solving what he thought was a "problem" with live bait, coupled with the construction of midwest reservoirs, and the emerging sport fisheries for bass, creating the birth of the soft-plastic lure industry.... yeah that was original. Bob Clouser and the Clouser Deep Minnow... People are quick to scream "it is just a jig" and "there have been weighted bucktails for a hundred years" and other ill-informed crap... learn the background, the merge of industry people, technology that created the injection molded lead dumbells at the right time and the provided to the right person at the right place, and Bob's understanding of what he wanted to do as it related to creating a "fly" to emulate baitfish in a way no other combination of technology and materials ever had... yep ORIGINAL but also incrementally developed from the past.

 

Differences in fly tying as we commonly accept the parameters of fly tying, are so incremental at this stage as to be literally, a drop of water in an ocean. There is absolutely nothing wrong with approaching fly design and creation with no preconceived notions or boundaries, but we should realize that lashing bits of stuff to a hook with thread has been done for ages... The sometimes statutory and often moral limits of what a fly actually is, sort of puts it all in perspective.

 

To me there are only two circumstances in which originality matters (and there are always exceptions) ... the first is a personal accomplishment, fooling a desired quarry with a pattern and presentation you yourself figured out (as in your moth pattern) and that cannot be argued or diminished. The second is if someone has the ego and desire to make a profit from whatever he thinks he (or she in case I was offending anyone....) created.

[salmobytes 0]

Originality matters when fly manufacturers pay royalties for designs they produce, for instance when XYZ promoted the Dahlberg Diver. And wanted a share of the royalties.