I think innovative is probably the wrong word - it was a culmination of quite a few ideas.
Even back in the time of Halford and Skues it was clearly recognised that fish would take emerging nymphs. Halford felt that you could never 'imitate the wriggle' and dismissed them, Skues didn't.
Flies remained in their standard classifications - wet, dry and nymph. That didn't stop people fishing just in or under the surface though.
The Klink did a couple of things, although not in isolation. Firstly it was an attractive but tricky tie, secondly it was good at catching fish and thirdly von Klinken himself never referred to it as anything but an Emerger, which helped establish the classification.
It's always interesting to see how a fly catches the imagination and then the fisherman and the Klink managed to do this.
The originator of the fly acknowledged at the time that the fly was not developed in isolation, his own fly having been an extension of an idea he'd already seen in action.
At the time, in the early eighties, our very own Roy Christie was developing his Reverse Parachute: a good fly with an excellent hackle tying system and to my mind the superior fly (although I have to admit I've fished neither extensively).
Today we hardly stop to think that it took 50-odd years to break the tradition of wet, dry and nymph.
Of course, the whole of this ignores one major development: buzzers. But of course they were just a major food source for lakes so didn't really get taken seriously for a while! :-)
__________________
Wanted: A polarised monocle.
|
But here's some reading for you... 
Linear Mode
