Fly Fishing Boxes and the ShamWow Guy is No Help

Dave, I love it. Good one!

 

Well after almost 30 years of fly fishing I have assembled quite a sundry of storage boxes for my flies, nymphs, and streamers. Not that any of these boxes are special. Just a real eclectic set of Plano, Orvis, Perrine, and Tupperware containers. I have Adams stuck with Sulphurs, midges with my little BWO’s and Caddis flies with my nymphs. Imagine a house with about seventeen additions of all different shapes and sizes bolted on.

How I got to this point is anybody's guess. Probably it has been based on my early experiences and knowledge with certain flies. As I learned more I just added it into what room I had and seemed logical at the time. What I don’t get is how I caught just as many fish being a numnuts with a small limited arsenal of flies compared to my expansive cache today.

All these boxes have served me well and actually, I still have the first fly box that my friend Ron gave me the first year I started fly fishing. He set me up with a great selection of starter flies. I guess he felt I was worthy enough not to lose the darn box on the stream. I think my hope over the years has been that the ShamWow Infomercial Guy would show up on the TV early one Sunday morning with some sort Super Fly Life Organizer Box for $19.95 that included a special offer of two for the price of one and my life would be twice as good going forward. No such luck.

Still waiting, I moved on and purchased a new chest pack that has started me down this unintended, but well needed holistic journey. It’s like when you buy a new car you have to clean the garage out to make the new ride fit it inside.

The new chest pack won’t fit all my stupid boxes so I need to get organized. I knew this was going to happen, just like I can anticipate what’s going happen every time I go to the dentist for my semi-annual cleanings. It will be painful, I will get a scolding and new appointment to come back in four weeks to replace a 35-year filling that is falling apart. It must be part of the 101 class on how to run a dentist office.

So what the heck am I going to do? Does this mean I move my Caddis flies out away from my nymphs? Do I put my BWO with my Sulphurs? Can I keep my Red Quills near my Adams? Oh, the humanity what would Brad Pitt do?

Well, the first thing I did was take stock of my situation. No that did not mean dashing to the fridge for a Yuengling. It meant not only figuring out where to put the flies but understanding what I already had in the inventory. Maybe the dentist visits aren’t such a bad thing after all.

I then spent some time sorting through all those flies by putting them on the kitchen table. It became evident that this was not going to work when my English Springer Spaniel came up to me with a head full of flies that looked like Colonel Henry Blake’s fly fishing hat from M*A*S*H.

So I needed a way to get these flies organized. Just like you find at a fly shop, only smaller, cheaper, portable and something my dog wouldn’t wear on her head. Well after a little research it seems people who dabble in beads, whatever the hell that is all about, seem to have many of the same anxieties I do about being organized. Apparently, there are lots of beads needing to be organized out there because there are quite a few choices on the art supply websites.

With a little more research they advertise these boxes for workshop organizers too. So I trucked on over to Home Depot to see if I could find something right away. I couldn’t possibly wait for the beadheads to ship me something that could take days. I needed to solve this problem before my next dentist visit.

I found the Rimax four tier rack of removable trays. Next to it were extra spare trays and I was able to get the whole set-up with a few extra trays for about $21. [chorus singing and clouds are parting] After what I saw the beadhead organizers were going to have to solve their problems without my help. I snapped up the trays and ran on home.

So now I can place all my flies into about eight portable trays fully organized by type and size. I could even label each tray. The plan will be to still haul most of my flies with me as I head out. However, I’ll load up just a couple of fly boxes as needed and leave the trays in the truck.

I know this has its fault’s. The most obvious is numnuts anticipating what might happen on the stream. Since my name is Dave and not the Amazing Kreskin this could be not so good when the March Browns make an early visit to Penn's Creek this year. I figure I’ll just always have to bring my standby favorite of five flies that catch me 90% of my fish anyway. I think that is all Ron let me have when I first got started. We will see how it goes.

Now if I can just get the ShamWow guy to clean my garage I’ll have time to go fishing!