2025 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 27th, 28th, and 29th, 2025. This is the 28th 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 Friday, February 7th. 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 twelve categories in the contest. 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/Rationale For Entering
1	Nymph	Gilled Baetis Nymph	A very realistic-looking nymph baetis pattern and one that I had never tied before. I like the nymph skin on the top of the abdomen and thorax.
2	Dry Fly	Royal Coachman	The most popular dry fly pattern in existence. It’s a classic.
3	Soft Hackle	Endrick Spider	A Scottish wet fly named for the River Endrick. A spider is a simple soft hackle pattern and this one is primarily tied with pheasant tail fibers and a partridge feather.
4	Wet Fly	Red Arsed Green Peter	A Scottish loch-style wet fly which is a little complicated to tie. I wasn’t all that happy with how this one turned out.
5	Smallmouth Bass	Ol’ Mr. Wiggly	This is a foam-bodied bass fly with a lot of wiggle to it. I think this one tuned out the best of all twelve of my entries.
6	Bass	Whitlock’s Waking Minnow	There’s a lot of deer hair in this pattern created by the late Dave Whitlock of Oklahoma.
7	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.
8	Salmon/Steelhead	Dun Wing	A nice salmon fly pattern from Mary Orvis Marbury’s book “Favorite Flies and Their Histories”.
9	Saltwater	Ally’s Shrimp	This is the most popular and famous saltwater shrimp pattern around. It was created by Alastair Gowans.
10	Streamer	Gray Ghost	A streamer pattern developed by Carrie G. Stevens of Maine in 1924. She developed many of the extra-long streamer patterns. This one is tied on a 9X-long hook.
11	Tenkara	Violet Mendori Jun	This is a nice Tenkara-style fly but with swept-back hackle instead of the more popular swept-forward. The key to tying this fly is having claret-dyed hackle.
12	Euro Nymph	McKenna’s Rumble Bug	This is one of my top five Euro nymph patterns. I fish this one regularly and with good success.

The winners of the contest will be announced on Friday March 28, 2025 at the Sowbug Roundup Shindig which will be held at St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Church in Mountain Home, AR.