IMAGINATION - DEAD OR ALIVE?
I began writing this article after reading Deanna's weekly column entitled, ?But How? FAOL Vol. 13, No 20, February 1-8, 2010. It was not intended to be submitted to FAOL for publication but was written as part of another project. It was also intended to be a ?tip? rather than a question. By the time it was finished, I realized it is both.
i watched a video on youtube last night of a young fella doing a very sloppy job of tying a thingamabobber into the thorax section of something resembling a stimulator, then adding 2 sets of rubber legs tied in madam x style, and hackling it parachute style. clearly, imagination isn't dead. the stimulator is fairly new, the thingamabobber is only a couple of years old, and this hybrid of an indicator fly (which he called the high floating hi-viz october caddis but someone else had dubbed the "stimicator") is a frankenstein's monster of the 2.
i got an email last night from a self-taught female fly angler from idaho who makes a cast backward over her casting shoulder upstream with a curve back toward the bank to get around obstacles and achieve the drift she wants. she wanted to know what this cast is called/if it has a name. clearly, creativity and ingenuity are not dead.
I too have had a similar experience observing a guy adapt to an awkward casting situation. He was fishing from a concrete "wing-wall" about 12 inches wide, that ran perpendicular to the channel he was fishing for redfish. He was a right-handed caster and there was a six foot chainlink fence alongside the wing-wall to his right, hampering his ability to make a decent cast. He simply turned around, facing away from the channel and started casting, releasing his fly on the back cast, putting it where he wanted it every time.