I am now getting really into steelheading and have all these intruders and bunny leaches tied on waddington shanks with trailer hooks. I put them in a normal fly box but its a mess because that octopus hook doesn't keep the 4 inch body of the fly from moving around and all the flies get tangled up etc etc...do you guys just use a sectioned lure box for storing these types of flies?
Store em in a plano box but even that gets messy. You grab one fly and 4 others come with it. One solution is to convert to tubes. No tangles! I am a fly whore in a major way, I love tying, so I have a big plano box filled with my favorites that stays in the boat (or car if I'm walking in). I bought the plastic leader wallets gear guys use for corky rigs and discarded the mini binder they come in. I pre rig all the flies I intend to use (and a dozen more), loop the end, roll em up and put them in their own ziplock compartment. This gets velcro'd into the waist pack and I'm fishin. No tangles, looping on a new fly takes under a minute and your waist pack isn't cluttered up with boxes.
I put a small elastic band in a large steelhead slit foam box. I put the trailer hook in the slit foam and the fly body portion under the elastic. Easy Peasy and cheap.
jesse
Loren Exactly I used some 1/4" elastic my wife had in the sewing kit. I pushed it down between the foam insert and the plastic box and dabbed a little flexcoat on it. Dont use super glue it melts the gasket. I was able to get two rows in a 7" long box. YMMV
jesse
Loren Exactly I used some 1/4" elastic my wife had in the sewing kit. I pushed it down between the foam insert and the plastic box and dabbed a little flexcoat on it. Dont use super glue it melts the gasket. I was able to get two rows in a 7" long box. YMMV
jesse
Another option is to use a large drinking straw and push the fly into a section of the straw until the bend of the hook hits the end of the straw. I do the same thing with tube flys to pack more into a plano box.
Bare plastic boxes, originally for all sorts of products, can be converted to very useable general or specialized fly boxes with some glued-in foam. For tandem hook flies, use two strips of weatherstrip foam toward each end of the box, with a matching strip above each that will meet and hold the flies in place when the box is closed. An old plastic VCR box is too big for many vest pockets, but one holds a lot of Intruders and MOALs. Packing foam sheets in little boxes work fine to hold small flies.
A Wheatley can do double duty by securing a rubber band at the top (tie around clip at each side of box) to hold the head of the fly down and place the hook under one of the clips. Someone suggested this a few years ago on a forum, and I have found it to work quite well.
Ive always done the Straw thing up until this year I found straws from Arbys worked the best because you could see through them . Now I use One of those Red Rio Jim Vincent tip wallets. It comes with 12 Zip lock small bags in it. On one side I keep 6 different tips. On the other side I put 2 or 3 Pre rigged flies in each Bag
My Bunny flies are like Silvey's Tandum tubes. Fly is tied on two tubes and the fly is prerigged with a 2 ft leader of 12# leader and placed in a small plastic bag.
I go with plano boxes or ziplocks. I tie a lot of flies on waddingtons with trailers, in which case make sure you don't loop a hook in before you plan on fishing it. For one, they won't rust if you drop your box or wade too deep, and they won't get as tangled.
I recently started using leader boards. Just a high density blue foam card with slits in one end. Delta Tackle/Gibbs makes them for pre rigging yarnies and the like. I can pre rig a dozen tubes or stinger style flies on a card. Stick the hook in one end, wrap the leader around the card through the slit. Neat, compact. I can store a couple cards in a jacket pocket. No mess or tangles.
Cool idea Scott! I've been getting sick of unraveling my pre-rigged tubes from plastic bags. Where do you get those boards and are they reasonably priced?
Cool idea Scott! I've been getting sick of unraveling my pre-rigged tubes from plastic bags. Where do you get those boards and are they reasonably priced?
Haven't seen them in the states much. I get mine at Fred's and they're only a few bucks. Check out the Gibbs Tackle website. You might just have to venture north and fish with me one of these days. That super secret zipperlip just across the border is putting out a few fish.
River's definitely into the fishing. It's looking like I passed on the madness gene. Though he insists I catch only hatchery fish. One day he'll get it.
Speaking of tube flies, I hope that Ed relayed that I though the Eumer stuff kicks ass. Thanks for sending that along. It will soon be put to summer steelhead flies. Great stuff.
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