The annual fly box disaster recovery act

Well, it is between Christmas and New Year's, and the annual panic has set in. Trout season here in Michigan starts on the last Saturday in April, and due to the vagaries of the Calendar that Means April 24 this year. Damn! Hardly enough time to get the flies tied and a new rod or two to finish before the opener. And it is worse than you think- quite a few of our more famous trout streams are open all year, and some of them have nice spring steelhead runs. So when you here the first spring peepers you need to be ready.

This year is typical. What started as a the beadhead box, the nymph box, the wet box, the streamer box, the dry box, and the pray for death box (anything less than size 18) somehow turned into a massive jumble of matted hackles, flies floating loose in all corners, and a streamer that was somehow still damp from last summer. Go figure. It was pretty clear than any fly that wasn't producing that day was snipped off and tossed in the first box that came out of the vest. Such sloth. There were other affronts- those stupid-ass Hendricksons with the overhackle of wood duck that were supposed to be killers? The entire dozen still sitting in a neat row, all but one intact. The one I used is a bit matted and still had a leader knot, but clearly it had not been touched by a single fish. They get removed and sent to the redo box where the materials will be removed with a razor blade and retied into something that will catch fish. Yeah, right. That box has been receiving flies for 10 years and I have yet to get into it. And a half dozen size 12 nymphs, all untouched, but the half dozen size 14's in that pattern are gone. And the 4 black weed seeds that I tied before I figured out that natural deer hair was the way to go. What am I going to do with all this crap? And worse: the slim Borcher's that I know will never work.

And I finally realized that if you carry a dozen of each pattern, you can only carry about 20 different kinds of a particular fly in a box. So except for the obvious producers, I am going to cut back to 4 of each pattern and watch my backcast. Except for obvious proven patterns, and flies that tend to have short life spans, either because they are fragile (pheasant tails) or spend life near the bottom (I carry a dozen Walt's worms and seem lose them every 3rd or 4th cast).

This year, I have decided that wet flies are a lost art, and plan on fishing them extensively. Look for some future posts on the McGinty, blue dun, picket pin (a top seller in the orvis catalog about 1980), and the Alexandria (reputedly banned in some English waters because it it too effective). Gotta get tying, and right fast. It will be here before you know it. Of course, this is what makes fly fishing so cool. The season never really ends, and Michigan winters simply fly by. Or are at least tolerable until March 15.