Southwestern Montana's Premier Fly Fishing Guide Service

Getting Ready for the Season

Thursday, February 22, 2018

With winter still settled in here in SW Montana, fishing has come to a standstill for the time being. That doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about fishing and the upcoming season. We are tying flies to fill the boxes, organizing the gear and re-ordering fishing supplies.

I recently purchased a new boat bag. I have worn out my trusty Sage bag and since they are not offering them anymore I went with the Simms boat bag. Of course with any new purchase no two things are identical. My old boxes wouldn’t fit the configuration so I couldn’t fit all I needed into the new bag without some major changes. So off to Sportsman Warehouse to get some new boxes. So, for the next half a day I went through my boxes and transferred flies from one box to two others. I ended up throwing away a good amount of unusable flies that the sun and heat had deteriorated. I own a lot of flies, or should I say I am holding on to your flies until you fish with me. It was good to go through the boxes. They are smaller boxes but more of them allowed me to sort them a little differently, hoping that it will take less time to find that perfect fly.

I get asked often how I sort my flies. I sort them in any way that makes sense to find what I am looking for easily and in some sort of order and size. What I noticed, I use to have two big Plano boxes with wet and dries and specific boxes for rivers and hatches. Now I have six medium boxes plus smaller boxes with specific flies such as tailwater scuds, PMD’s, Baetis, Caddis and others. It now all fits in the new bag and I feel that it's better organized and ready for the boat and the upcoming season.

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