It’s been over three years since I started my journey into fly fishing. In that time, I evolved through many different approaches to storing and carrying flies. I’ve been a bit frustrated with all of them because the boxes I was using took up so much space. Part of it was that, as a new fly guy, I always figured I needed more flies with me “just in case” even though I always used the same ones. This resulted in a proliferation of small fly boxes in every vest pocket.
I think I finally hit on the optimum solution that maximizes the number of flies you can carry while minimizing space. I moved my flies from small individual foam-filled boxes to aluminum compartment boxes. The most common styles are the eight or ten-compartment versions. As you can see from the pictures below, I was able to consolidate the contents of four boxes into one. All you give up is being able to see every single fly. But if you group flies of similar character — like your Copper Johns — into the same compartment, they’re still easy to get to. You might have to poke around for a second or two to find the right color or size. I was more than willing to make that trade-off to reduce the bulk of the load I was carrying.
If you’re bugged by too many fly boxes, I recommend you look at this solution.
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Unless stated otherwise, this article was authored by Steve Moore