Met a guy new to FF on the Rio Grande in S. CO. this summer. He had bought flies somewhere in TX. (Bass Pro Shop?), each of which had a little paper I.D. tag attached.
He was so concerned about learning the names of flies that he carefully reattached the little name tag when he returned the fly to the box after fishing it.
Anybody else seen tagged flies?
Makes a lot of sense to me as I was overwhlemed as a beginner trying to remember the correct names. Since then I have met many fly fishers on the stream who, upon seeking my advice as to a fly, have admitted they had no idea if they had such a fly in their boxes.
If I used paper tags to ID my flybox…there’d be so much pulpy mush at the bottom of the bins.
No, I go from general to specific as I pick it up. Start off general: nymph, streamer, etc. Then attractor or imitator. If it imitates, i learn what it imitates, if an attractor i skip this step, then, if i’m still interested in the pattern, I try to memorize its name. Form follows function.
I’ve found that many times this works just as good, if not better, than describing a fly by pattern name. The guy at the shop might not know what would be a good dubbing for a Royal Whizbang Monstrosity, but he’ll probably be able to point you in the right direction for a large golden stone dry that uses foam, peacock herl, and some kind of flashy spiky dubbing.
You’re starting to see it in big box stores like Cabelas and BPS. Besides the name of the fly, the tags will also have a barcode which makes life easier and faster at the register and inventory management a lot more manageable as well. I also know of at least one of my customers who uses them afterwards to label the compartments in his fly boxes.
when i was starting out, the most useful fly-related gift was a box of “Eastern Trout” flies from Orvis. the flies sat in a row on a strip of foam and the names were beside them on the back of the box. took me a week or so to get to know them, and i was good to go. turned out they were all your standard flies–definitely the ones to learn first!
Silver Creek–the flies had little tags on them (that slipped over the shank) that had the NAME of the fly (e.g., Elk Hair Caddis)–I didn’t notice if there were bar codes also, but the bar codes make a lot of sense.
