When all young trout are approximately 6 months old, one of the elder trout gathers them in a school where they are required to study the classics (i.e. fly patterns from bygone eras). As a result, they are soon able to discern differences between the old fake patterns, like Thoedore Gordon's Iron Fraudator imitation (one of those Catskill style flies you mention) and genuine food sources. Of course as we all know, trout do not use computers and the internet, and can't simply look up this information in Wikipedia, so it is very important that they select an elder trout that has an exceptionally large brain to store all of this information so it can be passed from generation to generation.
And so it is that flies designed in bygone eras, such as Frank Sawyer's Pheasant Tale (or it is Pheasant Tail?), that once caught many trout for skillful anglers is no longer effective. The same thing is true of another old Sawyer fly, the Killer Bug. Today, as you say flyfishers "must use much closer imitations to the trout's food than 40-50 years ago". Just ask Dr. Korn.
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