Christmas Fly Exchange

[Joe Valencic]

Every year our local club has a fly exchange at our December Holiday meeting, along with a nice buffet dinner. Each member is asked to tie six flies, put them in a box and gift wrap it. No names are to be put on the box. When you sign in to the meeting, you are given a ticket and the other half is put into a jar. Once everyone has signed in, the tickets in the jar are tossed real good, and one member is assigned to place a ticket on each box. Throughout the evening a batch of numbered boxes are announced and you get whatever box has your ticket number on it. Since we have members of all skill levels, it's always interesting to see what you get. Yes, we have kids in the fly exchange as well, so it's always a hoot when you get the kids flies.

A few years ago I decided to be different (no surprise there for those who know me), and to "kick it up a notch" by taking the time to tie very nice flies, and to package them nicely so they looked like a GIFT and not like a bunch of flies tossed into an old Altoids container. Those who got my flies were very surprised, especially since I always put more flies than was suggested. Well, this has sparked a bit of competition among more than a few members, and now we are seeing many more boxes that have extra thought put into them instead of the way it used to be. I'm not a great fly tyer, but I try to do my best, especially when tying flies as a gift, and its nice to see others doing the same.

Here's this years gift box before I wrap it:



It's a nice assortment of steelhead flies that work well in our rivers in Ohio & Pennsylvania. I hope one of the kids get it this year.

Bead Head Hackle Flash Buggers in silver and olive, Bead Head Chartreuse Crystal Buggers, and Crystal Meth in pink, chartreuse and pearl.

Joe

[TyroneFly]

Joe,

You are way to modest. Those are great looking flies. Good on you for setting the pace and motivating others to do the same.

[Joe Valencic]

Well, my wish came true. One of our junior members, Rachael, was the recipient of the fly box. Funny part was that when my number was called, they reached in the box and pulled out MY flies and handed them to me. I recognized the wrapping paper and asked to swap it out. The next number drawn was Rachael's and she got the flies. Can you tell she's happy?



One of our members (and a FAOL member as well, Fly Tyer CC) creates a fly plate each year from all the flies tied by our guest tiers and our volunteer "Favorite Fly" tiers each month of the previous club year (2006-2007). Here's this year's plate that was raffled off tonight.



Accompanying the fly plate is a spiral bound booklet with a bio of each tier, and a full page recipe of the fly/flies tied by each person. These recipes also appear each month in our newsletter. You can check out recipes going back to 2002 in our newsletter archive at http://ncff.net/tln.htm

Joe