So here it is 2 weeks before Christmas 2008. Shortly thereafter comes New Years then a LONG wait for water to get soft to chase trout. So I have been putting off starting this years tying / box arranging exercise and I couldn't quite figure out why.
Then it hit me. I'm laying in yet another hotel bed at 4:00 am wondering why all hotel ceilings look alike when my eureka moment arrived: A One Year Fly Fishing Challenge.
So here it is: I am going to tie up just enough patterns to fit in either 1 C&F fly box or three altoids tins. That's it. That's my limit.
So how is this a learning experience: You're going to tell me what patterns to carry in that small space. Here are the criteria:
I live and fish in South Central Pennsylvania. Patterns perferrably tried-and-tested in those waters.
I want to limit my patterns to wet, streamer, terrestrial, and a very very few dries. I've already proven to myself that I can catch fish on dries but wets (soft hackle, fuzzy nymphs, flymphs) are another story.
I'd like you to suggest exact patterns and sizes to put in this small space and I will only tie and carry those patterns. If you can include your most sucesful method to fish that pattern, it would be tested on 'my waters'.
Next Christmas, I'll review my logs and see how my learning experience went.
I'm tired of carrying around a small fly shop when I go out and I just know that you all can teach me something about pattern selection and can offer some great ideas for this project.
I'm especially interested in 'guide flies' of the wet and streamer variety. Most of the streams are small, but some are larger, some are stocked, some are wild water, so the patterns will need to be diverse (or so I assume).
Let's have some fun with this and start me off on my one year project to fish with only a small number of 'sucessful' wet patterns.
Thanks. This should be fun.