2024 Sowbug Roundup – Fly Tying Contest

Sowbug Roundup is a three day fly tying and fly fishing show that is held at the Baxter County Fairgrounds in Mountain Home, Arkansas. The next event will be held Mar 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, 2024. This is the 27th year that the North Arkansas Fly Fishers (NAFF) have put on the Sowbug Roundup. The first Sowbug had 20 tyers and 150 attendees. The 2019 Sowbug had over 140 fly tiers and over 1000 attendees. The official name is actually the International Sowbug Roundup, a Celebration of Fly Fishing. You can read more about event on their official webpage by clicking here.

Part of the Roundup is a fly tying contest. Your entries were due last Friday, February 9th. An announcement with the rules of the contest can be found here.

If you’ve read some of my past blog posts, you would know that I really enjoy fly tying contests. As I did last year, I again decided to enter all eleven categories in the contest – except for the Youth Category of course. I really enjoy going out and finding new fly patterns that I had never tied before in order to complete my lineup.

Here are my entries for this year’s fly tying contest.

#	Category	Fly Pattern	Reason For Entering
1	Nymph	Glass Eyed Damselfly	A good-looking damselfly nymph pattern with big, red eyes and one I had never tied before.
2	Dry Fly	Hornberg	A very impressive and old dry fly pattern and one that I had never tied before.
3	Soft Hackle	Top Secret Soft Hackle	This is the fly I think of when I want to fish a soft hackle (which is fairly rare). It’s a version of a nymph called the Top Secret Midge but it has been tied with a starling feather soft hackle instead of the top secret wing bud material.
4	Classic Wet Fly	Claret Bumble	An old English wet fly that is fairly simple but I think it looks very impressive.
5	Tenkara	Quilled Body Sakasa	An nice looking tenkara kebari that was first tied by the famous fly tyer Davie McPhail.
6	Smallmouth Bass	Muddler Minnow	This is a fairly old bass fly tied mostly with deer hair and some turkey wing slips. I think it looks great.
7	Bass	Gartside Gurgler	An impressive looking foam bodied bass fly in a variation that was first tied by the famous fly tyer Davie McPhail.
8	Warm Water	CJ’s Freaky Frog	An eye-catching foam frog fly pattern that looks very realistic. CJ are the initials of the Ozark-local fly tyer who first tied it.
9	Streamer	Thin Mint	It’s just a variation of a Wooly Bugger but it has a nice color combination. Next year I need to come up with a better streamer pattern.
10	Saltwater	Lefty’s Deceiver	I have entered this one each of the last two years but was never very happy with it. This year’s entry is much better.
11	Salmon/Steelhead	Durham Ranger	An amazing looking salmon fly with wings made from golden pheasant tippet and Jungle Cock eyes. I found a nice Jungle Cock saddle on eBay recently so I had plenty of eyes to pick from!

The winners of the contest will be announced on Friday March 22, 2024 at the Sowbug Roundup Shindig which will be held at St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Church in Mountain Home, AR.