inspiration and fly stealing

sometimes i just sit at the vice and go brain dead i cant think for the life of me what to tie next boxes full of just about every kind of material surround me but i just cant get it together a bare hook sits in the vice waiting to become some kind of baitfish pattern , what do you do when you go blank , well for me i go looking towards the saltwater fly fishers mostly from the states because pretty much all of there flies are made to be baitfish well apart from the odd shrimp or crab pattern



i look at these flies like the one above and think from outside the box for a moment if i added a few stripes to this and an orange throat it may make a nice perch pattern



the fly above was probably made for something like skip jack or strippers but on its own would make a pretty nice pike fly and by tweaking the odd thing colour wise like adding red eyes or a zonker tail instead of feathers you may come up with something that will slay em



flies like this big saltwater baitfish pattern are all over the net and ill look at this and think hmmmm instead of that colour of flash how about a green back and chartreuse eyes and there the inspiration comes yup as easy as that .



the question though is it fly stealing well i don't think so all your really doing is updating a pattern to suite you own needs and for my point of view i think if anybody copy's one of mine then good luck to em the thing is theres really nothing new in fly tying except for the new materials that come along



i had a situation lately where i was going fishing and had an hour to kill so browsed around the net and within a few Min's i had come across a lovely looking deer hair muddler type fly for stripers and i thought if i did that in white with a red throat and some pearl flashbou and scaled it up to 5 inch's long i think that would be a killer pike fly so within 10 Min's id made it and it went in my box now the funny thing is it was the only fly that caught me fish that day so thanks to the unknown striper angler who gave me the inspiration and saved me from a blank day



so i hope I've given you something to get the old brain cells going and enjoy your searching and the new flies your going to tie ...have fun........