Organizing my fly box, a futile effort?

[newfie]

Every few fishing trips requires the unavoidable reorganization of my flies. That?s right, sitting down to carefully pull each one from its? foam pedestal, to reinsert each and every one in accordance to its? size, type, style, shape, quality and among other classifications only my deepest subconscious understands. Those I?m most proud of, towards the top of course
A task often accomplished with great care at my coffee table while sipping a hot cup of tea while my better half occasionally glances my way and says, ?organizing your flies again I see?.
My efforts, futile!
For you see after some time of not catching fish, I change flies like changing socks. Each new fly carefully plucked from its? home and quickly tied on my liter with the utmost precision as though aligning the sights on a sniper?s scope. This fly, this time, this pocket, this day will surely catch the biggest trout in this here Newfoundland. After all, this fly?s obviously perfect; So perfect I could eat it myself!
But Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, no luck.
Being stubborn individual, I persist. Each unsuccessful fly thrown back in my case in no particular place, with no particular order and with the disregard of last Monday?s trash. You think I?d learn? Nope, not me, no way! So focused on the task at hand, my each thought more compartmentalized than the flies in my case.
Oh, but this next fly, that?ll be the one!

[Betty Hiner]

The short answer to your question? "YES!!!"

[Normand]

Organizing my fly box, a futile effort?

nope! just put it back in the same place you took it from!

[modocdan]

I pretty much consider any fly box organized as long as it's full..................
I do however keep midges and other teeny-weeny stuff in a separate box..
That.. in a nutshell is pretty DARN organized in my book, further effort is pointless.
...................ModocDan

[jeffnles1]

Sit back with your cup of tea and let me tell you a story. It may sound like a fable, but it is mostly true.

In a land far-far away in a different time and place, one of my friends had a wife. This wife arranged her kitchen pantry in alphabetical order. Not just a simple alphabet, but things were grouped in categories and those categories were in alphabetical order. For example, Spices came before Vegetables. Now, within each category, the things were in alphabetical order. For example, in spices, Cinnamon came before Paprika. When there were multiples of the same thing, they were in the category, in order of product type, and then in order of brand name.

The last I heard from this friend, he told me his ex wife was seeing a new psychiatrist and was on a different set of meds. She did still organize the kitchen pantry in alphabetical order but was dealing with obsessive behavior with her doctor and meds.

The morale to this little fable is we are still unclear if her mental state led to the organization of the kitchen pantry, or if the act of organizing the pantry led to her condition.

Think about this fable the next time you start organizing your fly box by reinserting each and every one in accordance to its size, type, style, shape, quality and among other classifications.

Just a little cautionary tale to ponder on a rainy day.

Jeff

[joerogrz]

Persistent organization (and other things) is often a sign of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Perfectionism is also an attribute associated with OCD. Some other things you have not mentioned, but are associated with OCD are things like counting tiles or blocks on floors or walls, not being able to concentrate when your four-piece fly rod eyes aren't perfectly lined up, ignoring conversations when the lamp isn't facing the way it should or is slightly off center from the dust ring around where it was before, and obsessive cleanliness..... Don't worry, most of us are like that.... I like for my flies to be neatly arranged also.

[flybinder]

As long as you don't buy a micro-laser engraver and begin etching the "dates made" and the "entire pattern recipe" onto the hook bend of each fly, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Personally, I have fly boxes for "types" of flies, i.e. Wooly Buggers, Dries, etc, and as long as the lid closes securely on each box, "they're well organized".
One chap, I often fish with, on EVERY instance that he reels his line, back onto his reel, he flips his rod and reel upside down so with the reel spool facing up to where he can see it and using his fingers for guiding the line back & forth, he winds the line, back onto the spool in perfect, aligned "rows".
Many times, I've waited stream side, while he's stripped off ALL 90' of fly line at his feet......... just to start over and make it lay PERFECTLY in coils on the arbor.
And, yet......... his tying bench looks exactly like mine......... and explosion at a fly shop, his wood working shop, looks even worse and I wouldn't allow one of my dogs to sleep in his truck!?! Go figure!?!

[Buddy Sanders]

Fly 'box'???

That's what gets to me.

Only one?

I have lots of them. Not a thousand, but way more than a hundred. ALL have flies in them.

Flies for this particular river. Flies for a specific lake. Flies for a specific technique. Flies by species. Flies by fly type within these subsets.

'Organizing' mine as you suggest wouldn't require a coffee table, it would need serious warehouse space.

Feel blessed to be able to keep it that simple...

Odd, though, I mostly fish only few actual fly patterns throughout the year...maybe what I need isn't 'organization, it's a dumpster....

Buddy

[Eric-WD]

I read an article recently (could have been here) where the Writer told of organizing his boxes by size, he got into a great hatch and in his hurry to get a fly tied on dropped the open box and watched the whole thing float off down the swift moving river in a mini hatch of its own. Every fly of the size that he needed went down river and he didn't catch any fish.

Organized it good, but I think you can over due it.

Eric

[waynep]

Based on my experience, it's a never ending process. I reorganized all my trout flies the other night. . . . You'll get lots of practice over the course of you fly fishing life!

-wayne