"My Trout Box Needs Help" Swap

[ScottK 0]

Thanks BB, good luck with the trout!

[Chase Creek 0]

Thanks for the update. I'm pitching my tent by the mailbox right now.

Thanks for a well run swap.

[Chase Creek 0]

Only 2 days camped by the mailbox! Got 'em today. Great job, everyone. It never ceases to amaze me what talent we have on this site.

Thanks BB for hosting, appreciated.

[vicrider 0]

Yep, like chase creek said. Mine arrived today also. Got that a beautiful jungle cock skin at same time. Both are top quality and much appreciate your handling the swap BB.

[shoebop 0]

Mine were in the mail too. Some nice flies in there that I haven't tied myself. Thanks for a well managed swap BB!

[Cannonx4 0]

I got mine yesterday, wow had some great looking flys in there. Thanks everyone.

[breambuster 0]

Hey, Guys, it was my pleasure to run the swap. I appreciate all of you getting your flies in close to the due date and thanks again for all the extras. You all were very generous. It's a breeze to run a good swap when all the swappers do what they are supposed to do. I will be hosting the Swap Club until the end of the year so it will be after the end of the year before I can host another one-time swap like we have been doing this year. But the Swap Club was about to go down the tubes unless someone was willing to pick it up and so I volunteered. I'll be posting swaps again in January and I will ALWAYS be happy to have ANY of your guys in my swaps.

 

Take care

 

BB

[netabrookie 0]

A great looking box of flies showed up today. Excellent job everyone and an excellent job of Breambuster hosting. Thanks a bunch to everyone and an extra thanks to Breambuster for doing such a great job.

Take Care,

Tony

[Jimboha! 0]

Got my flies today - super flies! Now I'm trying to plan a trip to use them. I did slip out to a local creek and used one of my own (reject ) flies to catch a cagey brown trout, about 9".

 

Thanks for hosting.

 

Jimboha!

[vicrider 0]

How "cagey" could he be if ya' caught him on a reject fly? LOL I think many of our fly boxes are populated with flies from the rejects from a swap. Nothing wrong with them but I think most of us try to keep our quality up there for the ones we actually send out with toe tags.

[Jimboha! 0]

I agree wholeheartedly! We always hear about the 'buggy' fly that catches the fish. Usually that is either 1) a good fly that has become beaten up and 'ratty'., or 2) a reject fly that is either buggy or low quality from the vise. I find a large number of both of these in my fly boxes. But for a swap, yes indeed - we strive for the best quality we can achieve.

 

Actually, I think it is most interesting to see who can consistently produce high-quality, and 'identical' flies. You can see this best as Swap Meister. You get to see about a dozen flies from each tyer. I could (but I won't) give you a list of the tyers who have submitted sets of flies that look like they came out of a replicating machine: they looked professional and each one looked the same. I strive for that level of tying! So my rejects are the ones that don't quite look like the others, where maybe the hackle length wasn't the same, or the head as too large, or the whole fly was asymmetric. But as we've already established: the fish still go for them!

 

As for cagey - the whole pool was only 1-2 feet deep and all 20-30 fish I saw were very wary. In an hour I only managed to get three strikes, but I was fishing from a bridge and it was very difficult to get a nice, soft landing casting down.

 

Jimboha!

[fishingbobnelson 0]

Great bunch of flies in my mailbox this morning. Will be trying some of these next week with jburge in the Sierra.

 

One of the best things about this Forum and swapping flies is the improvement in my tying. I am afraid that many of the first flies I swapped would go in the "reject box" or probably under the razor blade. I have found that I put more effort into tying for others than I do whipping out a few flies for my own fly box. That said, even the flies I tie for myself are looking better. The "buggy look" was the idea behind the Fuzzy Nymphs of Polly Rosborough.

 

Thanks BB for hosting another great swap.

[vicrider 0]

Hey Jimbo, sounds like a Tenkara situation to me. If I had some small streams around me that actually had water year around and a fish or two I'd love to give Tenkara a try. Kind of funny but on another board someone was lamenting the fact that they couldn't get the hackle to lay back the way they thought it should. I asked them if they'd ever looked at a Tenkara fly. They catch a lot of fish and sure don't lay the hackle back.

[djtrout 0]

My flies arrived today. I certainly have an inexhaustible collection now, so I'm challenged to get them all fished. Good for give aways and presents as well.

I do find my standards are a bit higher when tying for someone else. I actually don't use that many different flies when I fish, but this whole genre of tying all the different patterns fascinates me, and the swaps exercise my demons.

 

Thanks all!

[Jimboha! 0]

Interesting. I fish a wide variety and number of flies! My favorite would be dries, elk hair caddis or stimulator, or red tag, Griffith's gnat, renegade, or royal wulffs ... Of course, I love terrestrials: hoppers of all kinds, ants, beetles, and my favorite: baby blue damsel flies (adults), etc. Nymphs are fun, especially as a dropper behind something buoyant : scuds, sow bugs, prince nymphs, olive hare's ear bead head, and damsel nymphs.. I love wooly buggers and other streamers. I think I under-fish wets flies, but oftentimes my dries get soaked and start to sink - then they still get action.

 

You may wonder how I can fish all those flies: I almost always have 3 flies on my line. Sometimes if it's windy, I only do two to avoid wind knots. And when I'm in Idaho - I fish as many as 5. Yep, gotta be super careful with the cast and when landing the fish. Sometimes you even catch multiple fish (at Clarice Lake in Idaho Sawtooths, I was pulling in 3 at a time!)

 

But I agree with djtrout's sentiment: I enjoy tying new flies or types of flies. Always make sure to practice up a bit first - don't want to give anyone lousy flies.

 

Jimboha