Learn How to Best Organize Your Fly Box(es)
And catch more fish as a result →
IF YOU WANT TO CATCH MORE FISH, ORGANIZING YOUR FLY BOX IS AN EXCELLENT FIRST STEP.
Why? For starters, having an organized fly box, or boxes, geared towards your own goals as an angler — desired fish species, desired seasons to fish, etc. — will help you better capitalize on opportunities when they present themselves. Meaning, it’ll help you to make quicker, better-informed decisions about which patterns to choose over others when you’re actually out fishing.
That’s why a lot of anglers organize their fly boxes in different ways (they have different goals, and in turn, need to utilize different patterns). As a result, they might separate their fly boxes depending on season, insect species, or even fish species.
Now, let’s think about organizing your fly box as a sort of ‘hierarchy.’ Like we mentioned before, the layers of this hierarchy depend on your goals + personal range as an angler. So, before you begin, ask yourself these important questions:
- Which fish species will you be fishing for? Trout? Carp? Salmon? Steelhead?
- During which seasons do you plan to fish? Summers only? Summer and Fall? Winter? Spring? All of the above?
- What types of water will you be fishing? Examples: Salt water — open surf, open sea. Freshwater — lakes, freestone rivers, small streams, tail waters, spring creeks.
Have your answers? Great! Now, where do you want to begin? Should your boxes be organized by fish species? Seasons? Types of water? Types of insects?
For now — in order to provide the best possible example for a majority of our audience — we’re going to assume your answer to question #1 was…drum roll please…. trout! That’s also where we’re going to start, when it comes to our hierarchy of organization. Which means you (our hypothetical example angler) will want to start by organizing your trout boxes based on the seasons you plan to fish for trout. (If this example doesn’t apply to you, check out our quick note in the following section).
Let’s dive a little deeper.
Not sure how to start filling your Fly box?
Organizing Seasonal Boxes
A great start for any trout angler
Match the Hatch Free Guide
Enter your email below, and even if you’re on our list already, you’ll receive our Fly Selection Mastery Series which contains 5 free lessons to help you fully understand the art of fly selection.
If you’re exclusively a trout fisherman, it’s best to craft individual fly boxes for each season you plan to fish.
Certain insects hatch at certain times of year. Meaning, the trout’s menu is going to change with the seasons. So, in most cases, individual fly patterns that work well in the summer may not work well in the dead of winter.
Let’s say that you’ve decided to start organizing your summer trout fly box. You open the fly box, curious about how to start putting together each row. Our suggestion is to correlate each row with a specific insect or fly pattern. Of course, expand to more rows as needed. Most importantly, though, this is where your entomology knowledge will become extremely useful. Why?
We’ll answer by giving you an example. Say you have Parachute Adams and Parachute Blue Wing Olive fly patterns to organize. Both are in olive, so both of them imitate your BWO, baetis, or obviously, blue wing olive (all the same insect, just different names). Since they all imitate the same insect, you’ll want to have all of these in one row, or directly next to each other across multiple rows — ½ of the row or rows being your Parachute Adams, and the other half is your Parachute-style Blue Wing Olive.
A QUICK NOTE →
In order to avoid confusion, organizing by season for your trout-related, or other species-related, fly boxes is only one of many methods you could use to go about organizing your fly box. While this method, the ‘Season Method’, is one of our favorites (especially if you’re only fishing for one fish species) there are other methods you can utilize to organize your boxes based off of your needs. We describe all of these methods in great detail in our Craft Your Fly Box Course.
These methods include: The Pattern Method (organizing based off of the Four Kinds of Fishing Flies), The River Method (organizing based off of a special fishing destination), The Water Type Method (organizing individual boxes based off of the types of water you fish), and The Fish Species Method (having multiple boxes that target multiple species). Again, you might choose to start organizing with any of these methods depending on what your priorities as an angler are.
For instance, if you love fishing the Deschutes River in Oregon, you could use the ‘River Method’ and have two separate boxes for the upper + middle and lower sections as they fish pretty differently. If you love to fish for trout and carp, you could have separate boxes that cater to both species. It really begins with personalization. Now, back to the article!
Organizing Based off of Water Type
Be Prepared to Find Trout in All Types of Water
If you started by organizing your trout fly-boxes by season, It’s time to start thinking about the types of water you plan to fish.
This is where pattern sizes and colors come into play! In order to easily select your options depending on the type of water you’re fishing (and of course, to remember which patterns and sizes are which when you’re actually out on the river) we suggest you organize each row by pattern, from biggest to smallest fly, from left to right. Why? We’ll explain using an example, and a stupidly obvious fact!
A midge = a midge. Bear with us here. A Chironomidae is a midge too, but it’s a midge that’s found in a lake. It’s exactly the same as a midge you’ll find and fish in the river, so you can use the same fly in both types of water, BUT, the Chiromoidae is generally going to be a lot bigger. These insects don’t have to struggle as much as river midges do to survive, so they tend to find more food, and grow a lot larger as a result. We’re talking sizes #10-#12 — they get really big!
So, those bigger midges in your box (the midges on the far left of your row) are going to work better in lakes, and those smaller sized midges (on the far right) are going to work better in rivers (typically). If you were fishing a lake, you could easily find the row where you’ve placed your midges, and select the larger midge on the far left.
Now, it’s important to emphasize how many types of water there really are. Even within rivers, you have tail waters, freestones, spring creeks, and high mountain streams that all fish differently and often require different fly patterns. For instance, it’s often best to fish tail waters using smaller flies, so bringing your size #10 foam hoppers often won’t do much for you.
What we love about this “Water Type Method” most is that it combines well with other methods. Like we’ve said before, if you’re fishing for trout…. you can a)start by organizing your boxes for the seasons. Then, you can b) organize the content of those boxes based off of the fly patterns that you’ll fish during each season. And, finally, you’ll c)organize each row based off of color, and then size, depending on the types of water you plan fish. If you’re an angler who fishes only for trout, that could be your organizational hierarchy right here! It’s certainly a hierarchy we use all the time.
Next Steps…
Where can you start, today?
Now, if our hierarchal example didn’t apply to you and you love to fish carp, (or even if it does apply and you’re addicted to trout), we suggest you take a look at our Craft Your Fly Box Course. No matter your skill level or targeted species, if you know your insects (or you don’t, and you need to check out the Entomology Course to the right) and you’re ready to put together a solid fly box from A to Z, this course is going to change your fly fishing game big-time.
In the Craft Your Fly Box Course, you’ll learn about the exact flies you need by name, their colors, their sizes, and their quantities, in each and every one of the fly boxes that you set up. Essentially, the boxes you’ll learn to build are our dream boxes. They’re the fly boxes we would set up for ourselves, and we guarantee, they’ll set you up for success.
Still, in order to take that next step, start by asking yourself about which species you plan to target, during which season, and in what water. Discover which insects they’ll be eating, and in what sizes. Organize your box from bigger flies to small flies, from left to right. Trust us, the result will be insanely aesthetically pleasing. It’ll also save you from a lot of frustration and confusion when you’re actually out on the river. Thanks again for reading, and of course, good luck out there.
KATIE GILBERT
KATIE GILBERTOver and tr-out!
Learn the Right Flies to Put
In Your Fly Box For Any Occassion
Lifetime Access: $99.99 (+ Coupons)
Before | After
Slide the Bar to View Before & After
Fully Online | Self Paced | Lifetime Access
140+ Pages | Pics | Diagrams | and More
Craft Your Fly Box Course
All your fly selection skills are worthless if you don’t have the right flies in your box when it counts. Learn the fly by fly, perfect boxes to have for any occasion on the water.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
140+ Pages with detailed lessons to teach you what flies you should have in your box and what insects they imitate.
- Get fly by fly Steps to create the top fly boxes for every occassion
- Master the strategic approach experts use to create the perfect box
- Learn about insect lifecycles, seasonality, and planning for different bodies of water
- Learn the names of the most popular flies and the insects they imitate.
YOU’LL ALSO GET THESE FREEBIES:
- Two, 50% off coupons for any flies or assortments on our site ($100+ Value)
- Unlimited 50% Off Coupons for Catch n’ Hatch Fly Boxes ($10 + Value)
- An Downloadable PDF for offline Viewing
- Downloadable spreadsheet of my fly boxes, fly by fly & a template to create your own boxes
- Lifetime access to the course including future updates
- One, 50% Off Coupon for Any of Our Other Courses ($100+ Value)
