Have you ever sat down to tie flies and spent more time digging through everything to find the material and tools needed than you spent actually tying? I have and it becomes progressively worse the more broad your tying interests grow. Many of the organizational options out there are not conducive to keeping your materials and tools organized in a manner that can be pulled out and used efficiently.
The options I've seen out there have been "OK" but not great. Nearly every option tried has been too small, hard to keep organized, or hard to store. Getting everything pulled out, set up to tie bugs, and then packed back up often took more time than the actual tying.
When you first start tying having the traditional 13 x 24 tying station to store a few material and tools works pretty well. There aren't many long time tiers that remain in that realm since the more recipes you collect the more materials are collected along with them. As the volume of tools and material grow so does the means of storing and using them. My next stop was a sewing box and that was a great solution for a time. It carried everything and was quite mobile. I like the mobility as I like to tie bugs on the river. Once the sewing box began to overflow into three other containers I bought a 36" roll top desk. The desk was the bomb when I was tying a few times a week and allowed me to quickly conceal my wares the few days a week it wasn't in use. The addition of a very active child that plays every sport under the sun drastically reduced my fishing time and even more so my tying time. The desk was simply taking up too much space. I needed to consolidate everything into a store-able unit without get rid of any gear. I set off on a search for the perfect solution.
Being somewhat of a minimalist I don't keep materials I don't use. Having the ability to purge things that haven't been (nor going to be) used helps me keep things organized. I researched a lot of options before I found my solution.
You can see below where I have pictured all the individual components to my fly tying tool kit. To summarize what you'll see below, I bought the 20" x 10" x 17" Browning Fishing Front Loader Tackle Bag from Bass Pro Shops. Along with it I purchase five series 3700 Plano storage containers and two 23630 deep Plano storage containers. I already owned 3 Wapsi hook box pro 20 to handle all my hook sizes and styles. I also have two small 12 compartment boxes for my beads and barbell weights. I also have two plastic dubbing dispensers. These purchases allowed me to organize and store all my tools and materials for fly tying. Note that I don't keep my flies with or in my tying bag.
The modifications I've made to the bag are minimal. I cut the rod holders off the bag and added a strand of 550 cord to hold my tying platform. I also used double sided Gorilla Tape to attache my homemade fly pad.
My tying platform had to be updated. I took the advice of my buddy Jake and bought a wooden cutting board with routed groove around the edge. This grove keeps waste from making it to the floor and it is a nice place to hold hooks. I modified it by drilling a few holes in the corner to hold my tools.
I could have drilled a hole to hold my vise and or glue bottle. I used the weighted vise base instead. The clip on LED lamp with bendable stem I purchased from Amazon.
The top hatch of the Browning bag carries the dubbing containers, hook containers, bead containers, and weight containers on the base level. On that same level I store in bags my Hackle and Marabou. The lid expands which allows me to store the things that come out of the bag first when tying. My tread box, vise, lamp, and Orvis recipe book are stored in the top hatch when not in use.
The side pockets hold the two deep Plano boxes. One of these holds all my chenille, bags of dry fly wing feathers and Glow bug material. The other deep box hold all my buck tail. I have a lot of buck tail. The container barely closes. I keep a couple colors of fly foam in the pockets loose.
Top shelf container holds my seldom used feathers. Pheasant, Partridge, Turkey, and some others. I don't use the bin often so I put it on top since it is the bin that is the hard to get out of the bag.
Second container holds my soft furs. The front slot holds my synthetic fur, the second and third slots hold my rabbit hair strips, and the back are misc patches for muskrat, squirrel, and beaver.
Third container holds all my capes. I am able to jam 14 capes into the front slot of this container. As you can see the front slot is double width. The bin is the Plano 3750. The middle slot carries my saddle hackle. The back slot has my peacock herl.
Fourth container holds my tools, liquids, and crystal flash.
The bottom container holds my other fur. It's a Plano 3700 with no dividers. It holds my rabbit, squirrel, deep hair, wool, and raccoon.
All said I have room to put more materials in my bag. In writing this piece I also found a few things I could drop in the trash and not miss. More importantly I found materials that reminded me to tie some patterns I haven't tied in a while.
If you have any questions or ideas you want to share, please message me on Twitter @fishlaxin.
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