Because of the fly fishing/tying information explosion in the last 20-30 years, this question probably effects fly fishers who’ve been at it for some time. Here’s the proposition and see if anything comes to mind:
You’ve fished in a certain way, made certain type(s) of casts, tyed a peculiar style of fly, set up your leader/tippet a certain way, found and used a unusual fly tying material, found something that you use in fishing that seems to be unique, etc. In short you learned something ON YOUR OWN and have used that item, technique, etc. for quite awhile. Then, low and behold, you read about the same thing in some book, magazine article, on some web-site, from some guide, etc. Not only do you read about it, the author or source claims that it is something completely new. Now, let’s not take anything away from the person making the claim. After all, he/she could have come up with it completely independently, as did you.
Now there are several things like this that has happened to me and I’ll list them in a later post. In the meantime my question is:
Has this happened to you and WHAT specifically was it?
Happens a lot…As I have posted in the past, I will see something I’ve done myself and thought I “invented” it, only to find that someone else has “invented” it.
One example: Catskill style flies were the flies I was most familiar with growing up in fly fishing. They were the most popular dry fly patterns.
Sometimes, I found that wrapping the hackle of those days (often with thick and unruly stems) on a very TINY amount of dubbing as sort of a “pillow” for the hackle allowed the hackle to wrap better. I mentioned it to the owner of my local fly shop.
A year or so later, I saw on a package of hackle - not sure if it was Whiting, Metz, or Hebert - it showed doing this very thing!!!
I guess my question wasn’t clear. I’ll pose it again, somewhat differently:
What have YOU done/used that you was your own creation/device/usage/invention/etc. that you later read or heard about as a ‘new’ creation/device/usage/invention/etc. by someone usually a renown fisher/writer. A personal example: I figured out that a certain type of cast is needed to get under low-hanging tree limbs, so I came up with a cast that works for me. Many years later I either read about that same cast for the same purpose. The cast even had a specific name, that I don’t remember, but it was the same exact method that I used.
Get the idea?
I used what I called a ‘skip’, or ‘bounce’ cast to get at fish rising back under over hanging limbs. Something I worked out for my self, based on the old habit of ‘skipping’ rocks across a pond or stream surface. A few years later I read an article in one of the major fly fishing magazines about some guy who had come up with a new cast to get bugs back under the over hangs without having to go upstream to an open spot, and cast the fly to the far bank and let it float down, as was advocated at the time for this situation. The cast description was for what I had been doing for about three years!
I think most of what has been invented by certain people who first popularized it or patented it would eventually have been “invented” by someone else. Do you think no one would have come up with the idea of an elk hair caddis without Al Troth? Perhaps years later, but I think someone would have.
It is the nature of mankind that someone is always experimenting with “new” ideas, techniques, materials, etc. in fly fishing that leads eventually to new generally accepted flies or fly patterns/styles. In my opinion, anyway.
Not sure if this is what you mean but I think up and tiea lot of different patterns for sea run cutthroat. I tied up one pattern thatwas particularly effective. I thought hey, I just came up with a cutthroatpattern that nobody else has. Later I purchased the book Fly-Fishing CoastalCutthroat Trout, Flies, Techniques, Conservation by Les Johnson. A great bookby the way. In the book, Chapter 9, Coastal Cutthroat Flies, is a picture of myfly. Problem is the credit is given to Summer Carson, a California tier andclaims he developed the fly in 1935 patterning off the Royal Coachman. Which, coincidentally,was the inspiration for the fly I tied. The actual fly shown is a simplified version of Summer Carson’s fly andthat version is credited to Claude Krieder. Either way apparently I wasn’t the first.
Two methods of bass fishing, both of which I’d been using years before they became popular.
I couldn’t feel a fish take a lure when I was Texas rigged, so I put a weight on the end of the line and tied my lure about 12 inches up from that. I was fishing this way in the mid-80s … Now, of course, it’s called the “drop-shot” rig.
Again, because I hate fishing with the weight in front of the lure in Texas rig, I decided to do away with the bullet weight and pinched a weight on the hook shank. Now you see belly weighted hooks all over the shelves.
I know I was using these ideas long before they became popular systems for catching bass.
I though I was being cute once, when I needed a Pheasant-Tail nymph, and only had turkey feathers. I tied the pattern using turkey, and it worked. I was quite proud of my innovation, until a few years later when I saw a pattern for…you guessed it…the Turkey-Tail nymph.
Oh well…it just means that brilliant minds think along similar lines…
About the same time that I got some boa yarn and made flies, there were folks in Austrialia doing the same thing.
None of us are sure who wasfirst, but welike the flies.
I was fishing on the San Juan in a back channel and a fish was rising to BWO adults in a very thin current that was feeding the back channel pool. The feeding channel was about a yard wide, about 6 feet long and, and entered the pool going directly from left to right.
I was on the bank of the deep pool which was to my right. The brush was to my left. I could go forward and back but not left or right. If I went left I would be in the high brush and if I went right I would slide/fall into the deep pool. I could not go right to get an angled cast to the fish even with a reach mend.
I did an overland puddle cast. Most of my cast landed on the land but the fly and tippet puddled on the feeding channel, this gave enough slack tippet for a drag free float. The fish took the fly on the first cast. It was later that I read about the overland cast.
It is most often used when there is a branch or a tuft of grass overhanging the bank and there is a feeding trout next to the bank upstream of the overhanging vegetation. You lay your cast over the vegetation and it suspends you line/leader so you get a drag free float.
We are so ingrained into thinking that our cast must land on water that we never consider that we can use land or vegetation as a bridge to support the line/leader system. The overland cast can places the supporting structure that functions as a rod tip just inches from a feeding trout. It places a premium on the ability to place your leader and fly very accurately because you will likely get only one shot.
“Necessity is the mother of invention.” When faced with similar situations, others will come up with solutions that may be identical to yours and some will come up with better (or worse) solutions. I got a patent on automotive backpressure EGR based on the first sketch of the idea and a fellow in Japan came up with an IDENTICAL solution ON THE SAME DAY. Now our patent was honored in the US whereas his was not, but it makes the point from above.
I believe truly original ideas are pretty rare at this point in time, I will except electronics from that because of my lack of knowledge. I have had a thought or done something that someone else here would mention doing a little later. That is one of the beauties of this organization someone else has probably tried and succeeded or failed with about every good or bad idea related to fishing.
I believe the only right protected in the unamended U.S. Constitution is the right to writers, poets and inventors to protect their creations.
When I was a teenager and really into cars and engines, I thought I had some original ideas.
Learning about torque curves, I had an idea about a transmission that would keep the engine RPM’s at a point in the curve that would produce peak or near peak power (sometimes called the power band). This normally happens in the area around 5250 RPM’s.
I also learned that an engine likes a certain amount of fuel and air at a certain RPM to produce the most and efficient power. Controlling how long the valves are open would control this. I thought about a way to vary how long the valves were open by the RPM’s of the engine.
While these are both great ideas and would improve engine performace (my main goal) as well as efficiency, I was not the first to think of them. I thought that they were original, as I had thought of them on my own. This was before the internet and easy access to information.
Well, wouldn’t you know that patents had already been granted for both of these. The transmission idea had been thought of very long ago.
And I thought that I was a bright kid!
That again shows that people come up with similar, same, or very similar ideas.
Like Bobinmich said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Fly Fishing for carp. In the 80s we did it when we were having off-days fishing for trout or bass. Sort of a “oh well at least I won’t get skunked” kind of thing. Never dreamed people would get so infatuated with them. So silly.
I saw a presentation last week on the new Hummingbird 360, the latest in depth finder technology. It can detect structures in a circle the diameter of a football field. When you hone it down so that a fish is not just a dot (pixel) on the screen, it can show you what is in front of you instead of just what you just went past. The representative had download files photos showing bream beds with fish on the bed 40 - 50 ft. ahead of the boat the image was download from. They have tried, did not say how successful they were, to assist the local authorities with recovering drowning victims bodies from Lake Lanier.
The good new is you can get one for only $2000. Lowrance has a similar unit.
In the fly fishing realm I can think of two firsts right off with no problem. Turning foam plugs with a Dremel tool for shaping the body’s and dropping the word ‘casting’ for fly rod students when I teach. Its unbelievable the difference that change made in how fast people began to put the pieces together.