When is too many too much? Quick show of hands, all those who have at least six boxes of flies in their vest, raise your hands! Figuring each box hold 300, wow! 1800 flies, how many is too much?
Cover every scenario, every hatch, all times of year, day, month? Now for the rest of you, how many patterns do you realistic use day in day out? Five, six, seven? Awhile back I made a list of typical flies for most circumstances, came up with a dozen patterns. Aside for some untypical hatch or actually being there for that drake, caddis, stonefly blitz. Most of us are fishing off hatch when we can get a free moment. I now use two boxes (okay, 600 flies but way down from my high of 3000), of a typical season of nymphs, wet flies, soft hackles, CDC's and emergers.
Why? Well I just find it easier. Read an article in the NY Times recently regarding the lack of adult insects and the lack of ability for males to fertilize eggs. Seems global warming may play a part in this. We are actually killing insects ability to reproduce, one expert thinks the abundance of pesticides are also in play. That was my original thought when presented by several anglers their observations. Seems that the combination of low sperm counts and insecticide usage may have finally caught up. Not even going to delve into the prescription drugs in the waters issue, that is a whole another problem. So let's recap the issues: low sperm count-check, drugs in rivers-check, pesticide runoff-check, climate change-check, agricultural runoff red or brown tide-check.
Instead of worrying about not having the right fly, let's start working on fixing the problems. The tying can wait.
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