"Tradition" For Inventors

There were plenty of fly fishers who were outraged by the arrival of spinning gear on trout streams in the middle of the twentieth century. Spinning gear made it possible for unskilled anglers to catch fish — lots of them. So the irony of Skip Halterman’s Original Spinfly Fishing Line, which was created to enable anglers to throw a fly with a spinning rod, is pretty apparent. But Brian Hendricks says they really work: “It was impervious to the wind, and it allowed me to throw effortlessly every size fly I had in my two boxes. It curls and unfurls just like a real fly line, too.” In the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Halterman, by the way, was also the person who patented the twist-on strike indicators long marketed by Orvis. Which perhaps reminds us that real inventors won’t ever be bound by the rules.