How I organize my fly tying materials

Once you get into fly tying, you accumulate a lot of materials. If you aren’t careful, a lot of that gets thrown into a drawer or a box, which makes that small bag of CDC almost impossible to find.

First I organized my thread and yarn, then I organized my beads and hooks.

Thankfully fly tying thread generally goes on the same spools that sewing thread goes on, and there are tons of thread organizers out there. Here is what I use:

For hooks and beads, I took a page out of our seed organizing binders, quite literally. I got a small binder and clear zipper pouch inserts. I organize the hooks by size and beads by size and type (countersunk, slotted, cone, barbell.) I thought about organizing the hooks by type as well we size, but decided that is overkill.

Everything else went in a couple drawers. That finally started to drive me crazy, so this week I got my act together and organized the rest of it. I took a queue from the moms in my life and got some zipper organizers in various sizes. Every mom in our friend group has these for art supplies, puzzles, backup clothes, sunscreen, bandaids, etc. They are also perfect for organizing fly tying materials, so I ordered my own pack.

The grouping that seemed reasonable to me:

Soft Hackle

The largest pack for me.

Hair & Fur

Second largest. Deer, Elk, Rabbit, Squirrel, Mole, etc.

Rooster Hackle

Stiff hackle. The third largest for me.

Dubbing

Pre-made packs and my homemade blends.

Streamers

Bucktail, synthetic craft fur, marabou.

Bodies

Synthetics, mostly. Foam, chenille, egg yarn. One pack of quill bodies.

CDC

I love CDC and have it in a few colors, though I mostly use natural.

Wings

Matched quill pairs, para post, mallard flank.

Flash

I only have a couple colors of this, but it is so messy that it needs to stay by itself.

Silk

The antique stuff for wet flies and flymphs that I’ve tracked down (Pearsall’s Gossamer and Belding Corticelli Buttonhole Twist), and some of the newer Ephemera from 54 Dean Street.

Poly yarn & floss

I don’t use this much, but got it in a pack of stuff I bought on eBay. I mostly use it in small amounts on tags.

Tinsel

Gold, silver, and copper.

Yes, these bags themselves go in the drawer, but now it is much easier to pull out just the couple bags I need.

I also got the glass beads out of their various vials and put them in an organizer by size and color:

When I need to take some stuff to a fly tying night or on a fishing trip, I have a Toyo Y-350 box that I pack just the small amount of materials and tools I need, plus the table clamp for my vise. When the tools aren’t in their caddy on my desk, they travel in a Maxpedition EDC organizer.

How do you organize your fly tying stuff? I want to see your post!