The past month has not been great for fishing, seems like every weekend we've getting inundated with rain (at least down here in Houston).

However, all that time I've lost fishing I've been spending at the vice and I've been getting a lot of tying done.

Is any one else interested in doing a fly swap? We did one during the holidays a couple of years ago and it was a lot of fun. If you sign up within the next week I can pair people up with another TFF board member and you can exchange 4-6 flies you tied for your favorite target species.

Edit - Running List of Participants

MassAction
Linecaster
McKinneyLonghorn
Mitt78
WillieRIP

I will participate. Do we select what we want? Also specify what we can tie?

Great! Glad to see there is some interest.

I'm open to making this as formal or informal as you all would like. My thought was you could say 1-2 species you're interested in and let the tier give their favorite pattern or patterns for that, that way the tier has control over the materials and experience with the pattern in question. I know some materials can be tough to find or more expensive in certain locations.

I�m in. I tie mainly for bass and sunfish but have some experience with trout and redfish flies.

Count me in. I just got a new vice and bunch of fly tying material that I need to go though and get a tying station set up. This would get me motivated to see what all I got and maybe try out a couple of new ties.

Nice guys, I figure we can keep this open until next Friday 9/28 and then we can figure out who is sending to who. If you have preferences for flies you'd like to receive or tie and can post that, I'll do my best to match things up.

I've updated the original post to include the participants and will keep that running until the cutoff date.

If possible I would like original Llano Bug and Rio Getter. I can tie, Briminator and a minnow patern!!!

I mostly tie and fish for bass and sunfish

The flies I tie the most and will probably tie for this are Llano Bugs and Llanolopes, and a zonker crawfish pattern I designed. Lately I have also been tying some of Matt Bennett�s flies (Lunch Money, Rio Getter
and Carp It Bomb) and Chase Smith�s Scarpion, but I would not say I have perfected them yet. But I have fished them and they catch fish. I�ll gladly receive any flies in return. I am sure I can find some fish to bite anything I get in the mail.

You tie more complicated flies than I do but you tie what I am interested in.
Let's see how the rules play out.

I�ve been tying more complicated stuff lately but I still catch most of my fish on near deers and soft hackles, two of the simplest flies out there. Pretty sure a lot of the complicated ties are designed to catch fisherman as much as fish. That being said, most of Matt Bennett�s flies are not near as complicated as they seem when you break it down.

McKinney, you and I are pretty much tying the exact same patterns. There are some great tutorials on YouTube for Matt's flies if you haven't seen them already through Duranglers and GRTU's website (which also has a couple of Chris Johnson's stellar patterns). They really helped me tighten up my tying.

My major motivation to get into fly tying was because I couldn't readily purchase many of the productive carp patterns I saw people using. That has been a complete rabbit hole, and my box is stuffed with hybrid worm flies, scarpions, hammer head craws, etc. I'm always open to a new carp pattern if anyone has something that works for them.

I'd also like to start tying more saltwater patterns to hopefully motivate me to head down to the coast more often. Trout season is also creeping up on us, so I'll be tying quite a bit of stonefly, worms, and midges in anticipation of hitting the Guadalupe soon.

As far as the rules for the swap, it looks like it's just the four of us and given the small size, I'm open to suggestions from you guys to make this as big or as small as you'd like. We could also do a circular swap instead of pairing up, so A would send flies to B who would send to C who would send to A, but I'd love to get your input on what you want to get out of it.

With it only being four of us, I would be open to tying enough flies where I could send then same 6-8 (or more) flies to the other three participants. Would take a bit more time to tie and a slightly higher cost in materials, but postage should be only a few dollars more since flies are light. For that we would each receive three times as many flies. Or, we could pair up with another tyer or do it the circular way as proposed above. I�m open to however the group wants to do it.

I'm good with pairing up, doing a circular trade or sending a few of the same pattern to the other three.

Whatever is the consensus for me.

I really like the idea of sending flies to each participant. Unless I hear any nay's I think that's a great way for us to go.

Has this already happened? Count me in if it isn't too late.

You're in Willie!

Assuming no one else joins in at the last second. I will start a PM thread with addresses. I believe consensus is that we each send the other participants a few flies we tied? I'll do a final update consolidating participants and requests.

Do we want to start a list of who is tying what to go with requests?

Once you get that PM thread started we can all post requests and what we are tying on there.

The flies have started arriving in mailboxes. These are the excellent ties that MassAction sent out.

I did not want to appear ungrateful, I recieved the same from MassAction and also beautiful ties from McKinneyLonghorn. Thankyou for your kindness very much appreciated. MassActions flies arrived earlier in the week but was unable to get them out my postbox I met the postman at the boxes on Saturday morning and retrieved the box and envelope. Thanks guys.

Smashing ties we got from McKinneyLonghorn. Thanks for including the materials in the box as well as presentation tips! Really solid flies!

Great pictures MassAction. You make my flies look better than they really are! I really need to get better at taking photos of flies. I am thinking of getting one of those cheap light boxes off Amazon but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

I used two of MassActions flies this evening, fishing for Blue Gill in a small neighborhood pond about an acre in size that I have caught nice Blue Gill and 3 pound bass in. Lately with the weather rain etc the fish have been scarce. Tonight there was little response so I decided on the top right hand fly in the bottom picture to employ rubber legs and weight for depth and was rewarded with a chunky 8 inch Blue Gill. The next cast a strong strike and fly lost. I then employed the bottom right hand fly with the same result strike and lost fly. I think the tippet was bad should not have broken 7 lb but old I guess. No picture as my camera was dunked last weekend and needs to be replaced. Taken pictures on my Android but don't know how to upload to the forum. Thanks again for the flies, lovely ties.

Glad the flies are catching fish! Because of the rain, high water, temperature fluctuations and lots of other excuses, I haven't been fishing in over a month. I know the flies I received will catch fish, I just need to find a time to get out and try them.

Unfortunately I'm in the same boat. Although I've had time and made attempts, weekly heavy rains have the water high and dirty. Hoping to change that next weekend by traveling to the hill country, but the first arctic blast of the year may put a damper on that.

Linecaster, I'm glad to hear the flies have worked at least a bit and you've had a chance to get out and feel a tug!

Should have posted this weeks ago when the flies showed up. Mitt78 tied up some excellent flies, some of which (the Squirmy Wormies) I will be trying out this week on the Lower Mountain Fork. I love the lateral line on the Cypert Minnows (one of my favorite small river and creek flies) and hoppers are always welcome on local ponds.

I can't wait to hear how well they work for you on the Lower Mountain Fork. The the Squirmy Wormy has really become a go to fly for me ever since I started tying them.

Well, I have some good news and some not so good news. The good news is that over two days my dad and myself caught 90 or so rainbows. The not so good news is that they almost all came on streamers, with only two fish caught nymphing (with none on the squirmy wormy). I am admittedly not the best nymph fisherman (my technique is OK I think, I just am not so great at reading water and finding feeding lanes unless they are super obvious) so when it wasn't working out I went to my defaults of throwing streamers or swinging flies. The squirmy wormy looked great in the water but sadly it did not get any bites. That being said, I am sure it will work great on the Paluxy for bass and sunfish come spring time and would have worked better this weekend if I was better at knowing where to fish it. I am working on a full post about the trip and will put that up in the Fly Fishing forum later today.

I have been slammed recently, so this is a belated thank you to Mitt for the great flies. I'm really excited to try them out, squirmy worms have been killers on the Guadalupe for me and I'm interested in tying up some Cypert Minnows of my own.

I hope they do well for you. I need to get back out on the Guadalupe sometime. It's been far too long since I have been on that river.