Obsolete is not oblivion, it just that everybody has moved onto the something else that is "New & Improved" (there is a special place in "Hell" for the person(s) who came up with that phrase)!

Ron talks about old fly patterns and old split cane rods, and wishing to have the money to use silk line on them.

Neil mentioned Frederic M. Halfords in his article....

I recently been attempting with tons of research time resurrect the "Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear -Dry Fly" from "Perdition"!

The #1 dry fly for most fly anglers is the "ADAMS" which does not match any species of May Fly or Caddisfly. Some reports was that the "Adams" was meant for the Caddisfly hatch.

Well in 1885 the "Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear" was a dry fly, and it was the "Adams" of that period, and because it was effective for all May Fly hatches, that the purists and snobs of those days, on their private waters, and all their made up rules of conduct, and conditions of how and when to cast upstream to only trouts rising to the hatch on the water; that the "Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear" was banned from their waters, and anyone using it was banned too!

Even in 1885 the "Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear" was a old dry fly pattern, and then it disappeared, only many years later to be replaced by the "Adams".

"If you don't use it, you lose it!"

I hope to be sending my final drafts on the "Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear" to the publisher as both a "Reader's Cast" and a "Fly Of The Week" article.

I hope after the two articles are published, that what was lost but now is found, will never be lost again! ~Parnelli