I finally put together a page that logs all my fly tying awards. It’s a little longer than I was thinking (NINETEEN awards) but you can view the page here: Fly Tying Awards. The link also shows up at the top of my home page.
My Fly Tying Awards
Tag: Award-Winning Flies
Three More Award Winners
The judging of the 2024 Sowbug Roundup fly tying contest has been completed and I had the great fortune of winning THREE more fly tying awards: Best Dry Fly, Best Traditional Wet Fly, and Best Tenkara Fly. All of the winning flies were mounting in a nice frame and the end result looks like this.
The full details of all the contest entries I submitted can be viewed here.
Best Dry Fly
The “Best Dry Fly” award went to my entry called the Hornberg. This is an old dry fly pattern (it could also be fished as a streamer) which was originally tied by Frank Hornberg of Wisconsin in the 1920’s. I think the ornate wings made of long mallard flank feathers and jungle cock eyes were what caught the attention of the judges.
Best Traditional Wet Fly
The “BestTraditional Wet Fly” award went to my classic wet fly entry, the Claret Bumble. This is a very old English wet fly that apparently dates back to the 1500’s. Yes, that’s an old fly pattern! It took me a while to find the right color of claret dubbing to build the body and apparently the judges thought so too. The blue-dyed guinea feather hackle at the front didn’t hurt either. It made the fly look impressive even to me.
Best Tenkara Fly
The “Best Tenkara Fly” award went to my tenkara kebari entry the Quilled Body Sakasa. Tenkara is a style of fly fishing that originated in Japan. In addition, a Sakasa style of fly means that the hackles are facing forward which is the reverse of the way a fly like this would be tied otherwise. Let me be the first to say that I am not at all experienced in this style of fishing but the fly was fun to tie. I suspect it was a winner due to the low amount of fly entries in this category.
Presentation of Awards
The fly tying awards were presented at a banquet called The Sowbug Shindig. Here I am pictured with my award plaque.
2023 Branson Expo – Award-Winning Flies
The judging for the 2023 Branson Expo Fly Tying Contest is complete and I am humbly able to report that I won three more fly tying awards – Best Wet Fly, Best Articulating Streamer, and Best In Show.
Best Wet Fly
The first award winner was my wet fly entry, the Pink Lady. This fly won the Best Wet Fly award. It is a “wet” variation of an old Catskills Style dry fly of the same name.
The body of this fly is wrapped with pink floss and ribbed with gold tinsel. The tail is made from a golden pheasant neck feather. The wings consist of slips from a pair of gray mallard wing feathers. They are delicate and it is not easy to get them tied onto the fly and still look decent. These wings look pretty good and were good enough to win an award, in my humble opinion.
Best Articulating Streamer
The second award winner was my articulating streamer entry, the Big-Eyed Sempermouse. This fly won the Best Articulating Streamer award. An articulating streamer is a streamer pattern with one or more articulating joints in the middle which give a more realistic presentation in the water. This particular fly has one joint in it which was formed by connecting the rear hook to just the shank portion of the front hook with a nylon braid.
The body of this mouse fly pattern is made from several wraps of synthetic fur which was made by the Semperfli company, which contributes to the name of the fly. The tail is made from gray chenille and the head is made from 6mm thick foam. Oh, and it has big eyes.
Best In Show
The third award went to my Dusty Miller. This fly won the Best In Show award. That’s quite an honor to know that I tied the overall best fly in the contest!
This fly pattern is a very complicated salmon fly and it is certainly a very “busy” looking fly. The list of materials for this one is so long that it is hard to fit on one of my fly tying cards. Needless to say it takes a good bit of time at the fly tying bench to complete – a couple of hours at least for each one.
This one also happens to be a repeat winner, so to speak, because it also won the Best In Show award earlier this year at the Sowbug Roundup.
The Upcoming Expo
I will be attending the Branson Fly Fishing Expo on Thursday, July 27th where I will be demonstrating a few fly tying techniques to anyone who would like to see them.
And The Winner Is …
Me!
The judging of the 2023 Sowbug Roundup fly tying contest has been completed and I had the fortune of winning THREE fly tying awards: Best In Show, Best Warm Water Fly, and Best Wet Fly. All of the winning flies were mounting in a really nice frame and the end result looks like this.
Best In Show
At the top of the frame is my salmon/steelhead fly entry, the Dusty Miller. It is a very old and fairly ornate salmon fly of European origin. This fly was given the “Tom Schmuecker Best In Show” award, being voted the top fly in the entire contest. This year is the first year that the award became named for Tom Schmuecker, the president of Wapsi – a fly tying material company located in Mountain Home, AR. Unfortunately, Tom passed away a few weeks before the contest but his son Joe was able to attend the banquet and present the award. Very sad.
Best Warm Water Fly
At the bottom center of the frame is my warm water fly entry, the Dahlberg Diver. This fly won the Best Warm Water Fly award. It’s a fairly large fly, being just over 6 inches long, so I think that’s what got the attention of the judges. The head of the fly was made with tied/packed/trimmed deer hair of three different colors and the tail contains some really nice looking grizzly dyed saddle hackles.
Best Wet Fly
In the top row of the frame just to the right of center is my wet fly entry, the McGinty. This fly won the Best Wet Fly award. It was invented many years ago by someone named McGinty. The body of the fly is wrapped with alternating strands of yellow and black chenille, making it resemble a bumble bee. The wings consist of feathers taken from the iridescent blue/white patches on a pair of mallard wings. They are quite delicate and it is not easy to get them tied onto the fly and still look decent. These wings look okay (not great) but they were still good enough to win an award.
Presentation of Awards
The fly tying awards were presented at a banquet called The Sowbug Shindig. Here I am pictured with John Berry, a fishing guide in the Mountain Home area, who was one of the judges for the contest.
2022 Sowbug Roundup – Fly Tying Awards
The 2022 Sowbug Roundup has come to a close and I can happily and humbly announce that I was the winner of two categories of the Fly Tying Contest. All the winners were presented with very nice plaques for the winning flies in each category. They were presented on Friday night at the Sowbug Roundup “Shindig”. Here are my awards:
There were some really amazing flies submitted, so I’m pretty astonished that my flies were among them. All the winning flies were mounted in a fantastic looking shadow box which was auctioned off at the Shindig. It went for $1600!. My flies are at the left end of the first row and second from the left in the second row.
Here they are up-close and personal:
Salmon/Steelhead Category
Bass Category
2021 Branson Fly Fishing Expo
Last summer I attended the 2021 Branson Fly Fishing Expo and it went really well. The earlier sessions were somewhat lightly attended but the later sessions were pretty busy.
I spent the Thursday afternoon session tying Catskills-style dry flies and managed to demonstrate how to tie 6 of the 8 flies in one of my 5×7 Framed Flies. I must say that even I was impressed with how my divided wings, made from a wood duck flank feather, turned out on all 6 flies. After the session, all the fly tyers and vendors were invited to Branson’s History of Fishing Museum for a meet-and-greet event. If you ever want to see a frog harness or a minnow tube lure that’s definitely the place to go.
On Friday, I attempted to tie all 18 trout flies for an 8×10 Framed Flies display. That should be doable for me over an 8-hour span but no such luck. I managed to tie only 6 flies while spending most of the day gabbing with all the visitors. It was still a very interesting day though. What was interesting for me was that a beautifully-framed collection of last year’s three award-winning flies (one of which being mine) was auctioned off and it raised $75! Another cool thing was that this year’s seven award-winning flies (three of which being mine) will be put on display at that same History of Fly Fishing Museum for a year(!) and then will be auctioned off at the 2022 Expo.
On Saturday, I put all my frames and other projects aside and tied my award-winning flies exclusively. I hadn’t thought about it ahead of time but each of the three have a unique style or technique that aren’t very commonly used by most fly tyers. Here are those unique features:
- Woven Polish Nymph: This fly uses two colors of embroidery floss for the body which are woven using a technique called the Shuttle Weave. The general idea is that you grab a strand of floss in each hand and don’t let go until you are done. It’s pretty cool. During the demo, I did discover that the link and QR code on my fly tying card for this fly were broken. Since then, I found a new link and updated the card so now you can watch a good video of the weave technique. See my Fly Tying Cards page for the card and the link.
- Fontinalis Fin: This is a wet fly from Ray Bergman’s book titled “Trout”. See my Wet Flies page for more information on that book. Knowing that the word fontinalis is the species name for the brook trout, the fly’s name literally means “Brook Trout Fin”. What it is trying to imitate is the lower rear fin of a brook trout. Thus, the wings on the fly are made from wide strips of orange goose feather barbs, with one barb of black and three barbs of white attached to them. This technique is known as “marrying” feathers.
- Western Green Drake: This fly is a somewhat realistic imitation of an adult mayfly with the stated common name – its Latin name is Drunella grandis from the Ephemerellidae family of mayflies. What makes this fly realistic are the style of wings known as Wally Wings. Another interesting fact about the name is “drake” is actually the Greek word for “dragon”. And yes, these mayflies really do look like tiny dragons. To make the dragon wings, a single mallard flank feather is tied down and split at the stem to form the two D-shaped upright wings. It’s pretty cool, for sure.
My Award-Winning Flies
A few weeks ago I submitted 5 pairs of my tied flies to the 2021 Missouri Trout Fisherman’s Association’s Fly Tying Contest. The results have now been published and, lo and behold, I won 3 divisions – Nymph, Dry Fly, and Wet Fly! My winning entries were a Woven Polish Nymph, a Western Green Drake, and a Fontinalis Fin.
Woven Polish Nymph 
Western Green Drake 
Fontinalis Fin
Follow this link to see all the winning entries of the 2021 MTFA Fly Tying Contest.
I’ll be receiving my trophies at the Branson Fly Fishing Expo at the end of July. If you should happen to be in Branson at that time, stop by my booth and say “HELLO”!
Follow this link for more information on the 2021 Branson Fly Fishing Expo.