Homemade FF Gear Innovation

[MathFish]

This is a post I have been wanting to do for a while. A few months ago I struck up a conversation with a nice fellow I met while fishing. I noticed that he had a wine cork with a small length of paracord running through it that was hanging from his chest pack. I asked him what it was for and he said that he makes them and uses them to hook flies onto as a sort of fly patch. I told him that I thought it was a pretty cool fly patch and that I thought it was an inexpensive an innovative piece of FF gear.

I then showed him something that I put together to hold tandem fly rigs. I bought a small plastic pencil case and some craft foam that I cut to size to fit into the case. I used a sharp utility knife blade to cut notches into both ends of the foam about 1/8 inch apart to secure the line between tandem fly setups. The flies are rigged so the dropper fly is tied onto the bend of the hook of the lead fly.

Though the cases are slim, they are thick enough to hold two pieces of foam. I store the two so that the sides of the foam with just the line on them are butted together and I have not had any tangles between the two pieces of foam. Refer to the photos below. In all, to make one box is a roughly a $2.00 investment...

A few benefits of this: I can rig up tandems at home and not have to spend time on the stream doing so, also, I am able to save/reuse tippet material that still has life in it (which is nice benefit given the expense of fluorocarbon tippet.) But, I mainly like the time saving that I get from this setup from not having to rig up droppers streamside.

So, I was wondering if anyone out there has any innovations they would be willing to share that has improved your time on the stream?

PS: Please don't share any million dollar ideas, but just simple, cheap, effective innovations. Lord knows there are enough companies out there selling enough costly gear ($100 nippers for ex) and I don't think we need to give them ideas of how to continue to make expensive FF gear - They do that well enough on their own!

 

[PocketWater]

That's a pretty cool idea on the pencil case and foam. I have certainly spent my fair share of time trying to tie on the dropper out in the middle of the stream.

 

[AFISHN]

Very useful idea and thanks for the pictures;they are helpful in visualizing your idea.

I'm going to set up a few dropper rigs using your idea in the next few days!

 

[foxtrapper1972]

Really good idea. It takes me long enough just tying on a single fly. This will help.

 

[krayfish2]

A member on here came up with a similar idea for fishing out of the boat.....18" of swimming pool noodle. Works well.

Good idea.

 

[MathFish]

If you have a Pat Catan's craft store near you, that's where I picked up the cases and foam. The pencil cases are in the aisle where they sell the plastic organizational storage containers. The foam is either the 6mm or 8mm sheets of foam that they sell. The thin sheets don't have enough backbone to them. Watch out when buying foam there, they sell scented sheets of foam (vanilla, strawberry, etc..) and I would imagine that if the scents transferred onto your flies that it wouldn't be too helpful...

 

[BrooksAndHooks]

Cool idea. I use a tic tac box with the tag from the ID zingers you can buy at walmart inside the lid and put a few of my go-to flies in it, and have it handing from my lanyard when I am hiking/fishing and don't take a full pack with me and know I will only need a handful of flies that day.

 

[pcray1231]

I used to do something similar when I made minnow rigs for my bait fishing family. On the point is a single or treble (tail hook, depending on what whoever I was making it for wanted). An inch or so up I'd use fly tying thread to wrap along the shank of a single hook. The lip hook. This could slide to adjust for different minnow sizes, but took some pressure to do. Then about 8 inches up a barrel swivel, which gives them something to tie onto, while making sure workin their minnow doesn't twist up the line.

I'd flatten pcs of cardboard, toilet paper rolls worked well. Put the tail hook in the cardboard and wrap the rest, till you got to the swivel, and you just put the swivel eye through the hook. Put the whole thing in a fly box devoid of it's foam. And that's how they carry it streamside.

Anyway, that's not a joke.

But as for my fly fishing specific ones. The best I got is my Richardson chest box. Love the box, hated the compartment options, and the foam it came with sucked. Tore it all out and replaced it with C&F foam inserts, strip by strip, of varying sizes and spacings to hold all sizes and manner of flies efficiently.

My "zingers" are zinger belt clips from work, designed to hold a badge. They go bad. I ask for new ones. But the old ones can be easily fixed. 😉. Gets attached to the straps of the Richardson.

At one point, I had a P&S camera in a waterproof diving case. On the case I put some industrial strength Velcro. On the front of my Richardson I did the same. So my camera was velcroed to the front of my chest box. Easy access, quick removal. But eventually I got a waterproof camera to save weight of the whole setup, and I'm not putting Velcro directly on the camera itself.

My forceps, well, my mother is a nurse and brings home real surgical ones. Seems they don't take chances on cleaning them for fear of lawsuits. After a surgery, they toss em. One time use. But people gather them and take them home.

Couple of common ones most know about, but maybe not everyone:

- Toe nail clippers will make a decent nipper in a pinch.
- don't buy crazy expensive studs for your wading boots. Hex screws at the hardware store sell for a few cents each. They don't last quite as long as carbide, but you can replace em all for like a buck anytime you want. If you do wants something harder and more durable, studs meant for tires can be ordered by the hundreds and are still a lot cheaper than the wading boot stuff.

 

[steveo27]

I like to use Kold Kutter screws for studs - http://koldkutter.com/

You can get a bag of 250 off Ebay for around 25$ shipped