
Variants – If the music industry were as liberal with intellectual property as fly tying, Vanilla Ice wouldn’t have paid the Police. A lot of times a good place to start is with a proven pattern and then adding or subtracting. I was on a kick with CDC for a while and added it to just about every pattern I tied. By adding CDC and some Pearl Tinsel to a classic Brassie, the Hammer Creek CDC Brassie was born. All domesticated dogs are said be derived from one gene pool in East Asia. I’m not suggesting the same is true of flies, but flipping through some of the earliest literature you can see the lineage of many modern day patterns. In more recent history, think about how many variants of a Pheasant Tail Nymph we have since Frank Sawyer tied his first and that’s only the last 60 years or so. Sometimes a new pattern is the offspring of two, and even the best do it. Dave Whitlock combined Joe’s Hopper and a Muddler Minnow and got the famous Dave’s Hopper. However, the greatest innovation in fly tying hasn’t come from procreation, but rather in the innovation of materials.