At least when that happens, you have an indication that you are at least thinking in the right direction.
- Gary
At 02:08 PM 12/30/2002, you wrote:
Bob VanAmburg wrote... "after reading that article about the Peabody fly that Capt. Roger guy Claims to have invented...(It's a Bloody Peacock & Brown Soft hackle!!!!!!!!)"This awareness is what will put an end to all the false claims of 'originality'. Feedback from readers to the rag- I mean mag- will force them to validate the claim - or rescind it. Their reputation is what's at stake, if you make that so. Even with all of the 'Off the wall' stuff I do, I still never claim originality, although people sometimes affix that to some things I do. (So, if they haven't seen it before, it really is 'original' to them, isn't it?) If the 'art of extremism' is just taking known things to an extreme, so is that something new? "Eye-of-the-beholder" may come into play here. Is a size 32 Royal Coachman "new" or "original". Yes and no. There is a Royal Coachman fly, but tied on a 32? Is it new, or just extreme? There are a half-dozen 'innovations' I've come up with to do them, but what is really 'new'? Maybe someone else did it -or does it- too. Same with a 19/0 muddler. Known fly, extreme tie. Are my "Flex-o" flies "new", or just extreme versions of predecessors? Are my 22" long marlin flies "new", or just extreme versions of deceivers? Am I the first to ever tie a beaver? or a Platypus? I'll never really know. Who cares? They're fun anyway! 'Terribly wounded minnow' gets a lot of laughs. Is it new? Who cares? Saber-toothed rat...new or a variation of a mouse pattern? Who cares? Not me. We can go back to the thread of 'variations on a theme', but is a variation of a fly a new fly? There are at least a half-dozen people out there claiming to have invented the humpy and the muddler. Really, only God could know for sure if a person was the first 'chronologically' to apply a certain technique to a hook. But we can know if a technique had a 'predecessor', especially if it is in print. But we still can't know if that one was the first, either. Easier put- we can know if it's a 2nd, but we really can't know if it's a 1st. And any claim is valid until someone disputes it successfully. So, just for instance if 'Capt. So&so' is 90 years old and says he invented the brown hackle peacock in 1930, who is there to disprove him, other than a published work prior to his claim? Since it's very hard in our field to sign and date our work, other than by pictorally publishing it, it is also hard to prove inventorship. Co-inventorship is very common- two minds coming up with the same idea. Happens all the time. Was there a third- before them? A 4th? That unknown always makes it difficult to claim originality. Just my musings and ramblings over lunch...for what they're worth. DonO
