Who decides what is a "fly" for IGFA records?
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Posted by Steve P. on 2012-03-16 09:39:25
in reply to Parsing IGFA Rule "F"... posted by Tim Postel on 2012-03-15 16:12:19
Hi Tim,
No. You didn't ask that! ha ha...
When we discussed this on Gary Bulla's site
a couple of years ago, I consulted 2 people: Bruce Olson, fly guru at Umpqua and IGFA -Jason Schratweiser was the IGFA representative who got back to me - he was the IGFA Conservation Director at that time.
I emailed your post to Jason yesterday and he replied:
Hello from Australia, Steve. One example was when someone
simply pinned a small soft plastic like the ones used for crappie
jigs to a hook and submitted it as a fly Hope this helps
I asked him for an approximate date, time and species in a followup email but he didn't remember.
From the IGFA language about being "recognized", you might think the fly distributors, fly fishermen and fly tyers might all be
a part of the equation of "what is a fly" - flies the fly distributors decide to sell would
gain acceptance as "flies". But Bruce Olson at Umpqua told me that Umpqua
was not concerned about the definition of a fly. They have only 2 concerns:
1) will a fly look good enough in a fly bin to sell well 2) will a fly be effective
enough in catching fish to sell again and again. Umpqua receives many
"fly" submissions every year from fly tyers and regional representatives.
Paraphrasing from memory of what he said in a phone call, Bruce felt
that Umpqua's function was to make the connection between very creative
fly tyers and avid fly fishermen - if fly tyers came up with a "fly" and
fly fishermen were happy buying and fishing that "fly", Umpqua was successful. I have paraphrased what Bruce said over the phone 2 years ago so don't hold him to it.
From exchanging email and phoning Jason at IGFA, it became clear that the
definition of a lure as a "fly" for IGFA record purposes comes down to
what a small IGFA committee decides - this makes alot of sense right?
They establish the rules, so they decide what a fly is or is not. Jason was/is on the committee and
he mentioned Mark Sosin as being another member with a good long
term perspective. Each fly accompanying a record application is
decided on a case by case basis. I asked about the gummy
minnow series of course and they decided that these are flies, and there are
several records now that have been caught with them. They felt
that the gummy minnow is much more than just a hunk of plastic pinned
on a hook. In my words, it is crafted.
Interesting subject - to you and me at least...
Steve P.
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