Welcome to Episode 7 of our new live tying series, Tie With Postfly! This week’s pattern, the Deceiver was invented by late famed fly designer Lefty Kreh. Designed to imitate any inshore or freshwater baitfish, this pattern can be found in anglers boxes around the world!
Tie with Postfly is our new live fly tying event, where each week we will be announcing the pattern to be tied on Sunday, if you order your kit before Monday at Noon (ET), your kit will arrive right in time to tie along with us on Thursday evening at 6 PM (ET). All featured kits will be just $15 (Normally $20)! This is for first-time tyers and experts alike, crack a cold beverage, warm up your vise, sit back and tie some bugs with us!
Each Thursday we will be going live on our Facebook page so you can tie along with us even if you’re miles away! Or if you’re close by our Headquarters, come tie one on in person with us!
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Dan Zazworsky’s passion is sharing his love of fly fishing with anyone that will listen, read or watch. You can find him exploring new waters every day while chasing any fish that will eat a fly!
It gets me in the gut every time I read things like; “In the 1950’s, Lefty Kreh . . . put a simple pattern together and called it Lefty’s Deceiver.”
Lefty Kreh did not create the Deceiver in the late 1950’s, the fly design in question was a fly that I developed initially in the mid 1950’s which I called my “Inside Fly”, around 1961 I modified it for fishing for large ocean species, renaming it the “Outside Fly”. Lefty claims that we invented the fly simultaneously, however, the concept and pattern of my fly was copied by Lefty and promoted as his own original.
Lefty’s first publication regarding the deceiver was in February1971, the magazine article was called “The All-Purpose Fly”. In the article he claimed to have been working on the design since the late 1950’s and called it, for the first time, “Lefty’s Deceiver”. In this article he said that I had arrived at almost the same pattern and showed it to him five years before. I then went to Lefty’s house and asked him why he copied my fly; he then claimed that the two flies were not similar because of small differences like the position of the tinsel and wings. I pointed out to him that this was the same fly pattern that many of the outstanding catches in the Met Fishing Tournament were caught on in the prior 8 years when he, as manager of the Met, had witnessed and verified the tackle used. Since that time I have seen my fly become the most popular salt water fly under the deception that it was invented by Lefty with no credit given to me except by a few loyal friends that knew me and my innovations in the early 1960’s.
Thanks for publishing my history.