I am a thief?

Apparently I am currently being accused of being a thief. Yep, it is dead serious and very saddening and annoying.

In the German bi-lingual magazine Fly and Tie I had an article on a foam mayfly called “The last of the mohicans” which of course was a direct referral towards the classic Mohican Mayfly pattern developed by Oliver Edwards, the pattern that my foam mayfly was totally a variant of. The intro of the text I wrote for the article was completely devoted to describing how I got inspired by that pattern from Mr Edwards and giving him total credit for everything.

Now, when the article got in print I discovered to my surprise that this text had been edited out for the final article. Even though I  got annoyed with this I thought that clearly everyone will understand that this is just a simpler variant of the original OE pattern. Well that is not the case. On june 6th I sent this to the editor:

“…I was a little concerned though that you chosed to leave out all of the part about the pattern being a variation of the Oliver Edwards original pattern. I would very much liked that to have remained. “

I have always given full credit to anyone that I have gotten inspired to when tying flies, and I have always been very humble about the fact that very few of the patterns we create are totally unique, we always borrow things from other flies and other tiers and it is important to give credit back to those tiers.

I am not gonna be called a thief because a sloppy editor decided on his own to remove some of my text, so tonight I am publishing to full original article complete with step by step instructions here so that the record gets set straight.

Advertisements