Home made fly boxes...

[Andrew Mann]

I just made some fly boxes this evening.

I picked up two soap trays (the travel type with lids) for $1 and a huge sheet of craft foam for $0.97. I cut the foam to size and glued it to the tray and lid. They look great, and should store a lot of flies!

I also use Dollar Store pill boxes for nymphs, and sometimes find discarded geometry boxes that my students have pitched and glue foam into them.

So...what do you do? Please share your ideas for homemade fly boxes. I'm sure you all have better ideas than mine.

Cheers,
Andrew

[gqualls]

Andrew,
Thanks for the ideas with the soap dish. I use the pill boxes as storage systems fomr hooks.

[nighthawk]

Try gluing foam to the insides of an Altoids tin. Makes a great pocket sized box that is easy to use as part of a "Travel" kit and a unique gift set with some flies too.

[fototrout]

I have some Altoid Tins with foam on one side and strip magnets on the other. Works great for small nymph/midges. Use the magnets from hook packages, cut to size, and Zap-a-Gap. Cheap, easy, and fits in a pocket.

Bill

[leakywaders]

I don't like Altoids. the box isn't worth the price.

I use plastic folders, cut out a convient size, and glue foam on the inside, then use a hair elastic to hold it closed. What is really neat is thet I can make them to fit my vest pockets.
Actually hair elastics are great. They don't turn to gue like rubber elastics. Started keeping a few on mmy stick shift when my daughter was young (20 years ago). Now I buy them in bulk. Daughter calls them mini bungies.

[Flyandtie1]

I also like Altoids tins. I had my mom tell the people she works for to save the tins for me, and a week or so later I was getting overrun with tons of tins. I glued foam into many of them, and kept some just as tins.

It's great, Because a tin of altoids takes me like a month or two to finish.

The only real issue I find with the altoids boxes is that they are a little cramped for finger room to get a specific fly out, if you have 'em stuffed with flies.

[ol' blue]

I've used your soap boxes, too, but put in strips of 2 layers of foam to stick dries and streamers into. The boxes can be bought at Wallymart for 2/$1, and the foam is .50/sheet for the adhesive backed kind. I don't use them that much, but the kids all have them.

[dudley]

For large salty flies we use plastic video tape boxes with a double layer of foam.
The majority of these boxes are too flimsy to be of much good, but there are some heavy duty, aftermarket ones that hold up pretty well.

[Andrew Mann]

Great ideas, guys...keep'em comin'

[rainbowchaser]

I have a number of clear round plastic boxes that once held a roll of electrical tape. I will often just carry one of those with a few loose flies in it for bluegills. One has several smallmouth sized gurglers in it while another holds a small selection of streamers. I just put them in shirt pocket with a single spool of tippet material for comfortable smallie fishing on hot days