Re: Flatwings and landlocks and the gossip 2004

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Date: March 06, 2007 at 11:28:31
From: ken, [pool-70-20-4-145.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: Re: Flatwings and landlocks and the gossip 2004

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Date: July 08, 2004 at 22:18:31
From: ken, [pool-64-222-45-217.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: The origins of the flatwing. A passed on northeast tradition

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Date: July 08, 2004 at 19:19:10
From: ken, [pool-64-222-45-217.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: Flatwings and landlocks and the bull**it gossip

Years ago I printed out a little piece about Flatwings. I printed it up and gave it out. It was printed on green paper. It was also printed in Northeast Woods and Waters.
I think this was in the late 80’s or early 90’s or thereabouts. When I first aired Flatwings publicly there was no salt-water fly-fishing media or striper guides or any interest that could be measured on the Richter scale. It did not exist.

Things were different then. When Striper Moon came out there was still awareness of the old although even by that time the new experts were re-writing fly fishing history and included inserting themselves as players.

Flatwings are old flies and pre-date the modern salt water flies.
I found them to perform in ways that no other style of tying could duplicate. I always thought growing up that the streamer fly was the most neglected of fly tying styles and that they were too rigid and dead in the water. For years I kept tying to make a fly that would look alive in the water.

People saw my flies for years, long before there were any "so called experts," as there appears to be (part timers in disguise) now and
- Kenney and his “Flat Flies,” were
a kind of good-natured joke among the people I fished with.

The fly has no links to business or imitation of any other type of fly. They came long before the business did.
The first ones were based on the idea of a flat feather that would swim side to side The nine three and the Joes smelt used a flat feather but they did not swim, Those flies were the best streamers I had ever used. The Eel punt is the first flatwing that I used that swam the way I wanted it too.
The Razzle Dazzle came soon after and using a flared collar of hair or feathers or bucktail or marabou enabled me to add shoulders and translucency with the look of mass without overdressing the fly and making it into a stuffed animal fly with no life or movement in it.

Lots of people were around that witnessed the development of the Ken’s flat flies - into what is now called the flatwing. There was no motive for its development other than the one of just tying a fly that looked real and swam. It had no connection to the Mid-Atlantic at all. It is a "Northeastern born and bred fly."

Flatwings swim and are tied many ways. Many of them are tiny and imitate worms and some of them are thin and imitate sand eels. The Ray’s fly Flatwing imitates the silverside and uses Ray Bonderow’s bucktail fly as a point of origin. The big Eelie and the September day and night fly are good flies. They use marabou as a collar. The shape of squid in the squid Flatwings is outstanding and they catch fish big time.

Flatwings are the only flies that incorporate all the ideas I wanted to see working in a streamer fly if I could do it. I did it.

Some people say awful things about them I have no idea why.
Most of these people who do are new to the salt or are expert wanna-bees. They were not even around when Flatwings were developed and I wish they had stayed exactly where they were (in the movie theater wanting to be Brad Pitt)

Things were much better in salt water fly fishing at least as far as petty jealousy and envy goes, back when there were no false newbie experts whoring modern methods for fame and most of us who actually fished with a fly rod knew and fished with each other and cared about each other.
The list is small.
Very small indeed in the northeast.
All of us are over fifty. Most of us have been over fifty for a long time.

I have friends who have been fishing all their lives in the salt. I can think of several who have never used any of the modern flies that the magazines portray as basic flies for the salt. How did they as experienced fishermen miss them?
One of my old friends was criticized in print for not mentioning Clousers or Deceivers as basic flies that he uses or trusts.
The person who criticized him did not realize that my friend has never used those flies because they were new flies to him and they appeared long after he had favorite flies of his own.
Salt-water fly-fishing did not start with the Deceiver as being the root of it. The bullet bug is even a fairly new development from the sixties.
The Clouser is a very new arrival.

The older patterns from Maine Landlocked fishing are the root flies of northeast salt-water fly-fishing. They always were.
The flatwing evolved from them as did the Gibbs Striper fly and everyone who has real experience knows that and knew that all along.
It is only the new folks of the last ten years - who listen to and trust "grifter writer," newbe’s and fly store clerks or guys in parking lots who enjoy spreading fools gossip about what they do not know anything about - who falsely say otherwise.

The flatwing is a New England fly and it comes as a part of the lineage of Northeastern fly tying and owes nothing to any other style of tying other than that of the Northeast Maine Landlocked flatwing tradition and the roots of English wet and Scottish flatwing salmon fly tying.

The reason I am saying all this is I wanted to silence the idiocy and falsehood about the origins of the Flatwing.
The Eel punt has no resemblance to a Razzle Dazzle but it is a flatwing.
They are all different. They all swim. They are all Flatwings first and they can be used to imitate anything and well.
I am very pleased with them and what they do and how they have renewed creative fly tying in the salt with traditional materials and methods of tying.

I believe my Dad is proud of me for creating and developing them as an extension of the fly tying and fishing traditions he passed down to me. That is their origin and I am proud of it.
His favorite Striper Fly was the Magog Smelt, a landlocked Salmon fly.

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