Sowbug Roundup - Classic Fly Tying

Posted on 03/20/202603/20/2026 by Darrell — Leave a comment

2026 Sowbug Roundup – The Delicate Dry Fly

Sowbug Roundup is a three day fly tying and fly fishing show that is held in Mountain Home, AR. The event will be held March 26th, 27th, and 28th. As I have done so in previous years, I will be a fly tying demonstrator again this year.

The theme for this year’s expo is The Delicate Dry Fly, and I like to plan my demonstrations around the theme of the event. To make things run smoothly for me, I have put together a plan and I have prepared some fly tying cards that show the flies I will be demonstrating. It really helps me when I plan ahead!

Something new for me this year though is that I will also be a Featured Fly Tyer for the Day 2 Friday afternoon. For this session I will be tying in the main lobby with a video camera and monitor showing the audience what I’m doing a little more closely.

Day 1 – Caddisfly & Mayfly Dry Flies

On Day 1, I will be tying mostly caddisfly dry flies but also a few mayflies as time permits. The flies I will be demonstrating are as follows:

Caddisflies

Apple Caddis w/ Wonder Wings
Elk Hair Caddis – Amber/Brown
Elk Hair Caddis – Gray/Grizzly
EC Caddis Emerger – Ginger
Front-End Loader – Tan
CDC Bubble Caddis

Mayflies

Slate Drake w/ Wally Wings
BWO w/ CDC Split Wings

On some devices, you can scroll through the Fly Tying Cards I have prepared here:

Day 2 – Catskill Style Dry Flies

On Day 2, I will be tying Catskill Style Dry Flies. This is a style of dry flies first tied for the streams in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. This style was the first type of dry flies developed in the United States. Prior to this, the flies in the US were typically wet flies.

I will be the Featured Tyer for this session so it will take place in the main lobby where there will be a video camera and monitor to make it easier to see. The flies I will be demonstrating are as follows:

March Brown
Light Hendrickson
Quill Gordon
Light Cahill

Red Quill
Pink Lady
Adams
BWO

On some devices, you can scroll through the Fly Tying Cards I have prepared here:

Day 3 – Foam Dry Flies

On Day 3, I will be tying Foam Dry Flies. These are dry flies that contain some sort of foam to help with flotation.

The flies I will be demonstrating for this session are as follows:

Camel Light Crane Fly
Braided Blue Damselfly
Hi-Viz Beetle – Red

Tom’s Wee Hopper – Olive
Tom’s Wee Hopper – Tan
My Favorite Ant

On some devices, you can scroll through the Fly Tying Cards I have prepared here:

Posted on 04/03/202504/03/2025 by Darrell — Leave a comment

2025 Sowbug Roundup – Fly Tying Award

A preliminary part of the Sowbug Roundup was yet another Fly Tying Contest. I had plenty of time to prepare for it this time so I entered every category. You can see all of my entries at a previous post located here.

After spending a considerable amount of time tying the flies … I won another award! It was the Best Soft Hackle. Here is my winning entry:

Best Soft Hackle – Violet Mendori Jun

The award winner for the Best Soft Hackle was a fly called Violet Mendori Jun. This is actually a Tenkara style fly but I guess it was good enough to win the Soft Hackle category.

The fly is actually quite simple but I guess most soft hackle flies are. Besides the hook, the material list includes a violet thread abdomen, a silver wire rib, a gray ostrich herl thorax, and a hen hackle feather dyed dark claret.

I was quite impressed with all the other winners . They were indeed worthy of their respective awards!

Here is a photo of my award:

Posted on 03/19/202503/19/2025 by Darrell — Leave a comment

2025 Sowbug Roundup – Euro Nymphing

Sowbug Roundup is a three day fly tying and fly fishing show that is held in Mountain Home, AR. The event will be held Mar 27th, 28th, and 29th. As I have done so in previous years, I will be a fly tying demonstrator again this year.

The theme for this year’s expo is Euro Nymphing, and I like to plan my demonstrations around the theme of the event. To make things run smoothly for me, I have put together a plan, so I have prepared some fly tying cards that show the flies I will be demonstrating. It really helps me when I plan ahead!

Day 1 – Perdigon Nymphs

On Day 1, I will be tying Perdigon Nymph. The word perdigon comes from the Spanish word perdigonnes which means pellet in English. The idea is to have a fly that sinks very quickly like a lead pellet. Thus perdigon nymphs are constructed with oversized heavy beads and very smooth bodies so there is very little resistance to sinking quickly in the water column.

The Perdigon Nymphs I will be demonstrating are as follows:

Blue Flash Perdigon
Body Quill Perdigon
Butano Perdigon
Gasolina Perdigon
March Brown Perdigon

Micro Glint Perdigon – Peacock
Peacock Perdigon
Peacock Flash Perdigon
Rainbow Warrior Perdigon
Spanish Bullet

On some devices, you can scroll through the Perdigon Nymph Fly Tying Cards I have prepared here:

Day 2 – Euro Nymphs

On Day 2, I will be tying Euro Nymphs. These nymphs are part of a more general style of European nymphs. They are usually a little larger and somewhat more developed that Perdigon Nymphs .

The Euro Nymphs I will be demonstrating are as follows:

Euro Stonefly – Golden Stone
Euro Stonefly – Little Black
Higa’s SOS – Black
Higa’s SOS – Olive
Holographic Frenchie
McKenna’s Rumble Bug

Mohawk Pheasant Tail – Green
Mohawk Pheasant Tail – Red
McKenna’s Sexy Walt’s
Sexy Walt’s – Chartreuse
Sexy Walt’s – Pink

On some devices, you can scroll through the Euro Nymph Fly Tying Cards I have prepared here:

Day 3 – Euro Dry Flies

On Day 3 I will be tying Euro Dry Flies. These are simply dry flies with enough natural flotation to support a Euro Nymph and/or a Perdigon Nymph below it. The nymphs would be tied off the hook bend of the dry fly using a foot or two of tippet.

The Euro Dry Flies I will be demonstrating are as follows:

Corn-Fed Caddis
Front-End Loader Caddis
Improved X-Caddis – Olive

Stimulator – Yellow/Red
Humpy – Yellow

On some devices, you can scroll through the Euro Dry Fly Tying Cards I have prepared here:

Posted on 03/16/202503/16/2025 by Darrell — Leave a comment

2025 Sowbug Roundup – Auction Flies

Sowbug Roundup is a three day fly tying and fly fishing show that is held in Mountain Home, Arkansas. The next event will be held Mar 27th, 28th, and 29th of 2025.

I will be a fly tying demonstrator at this year’s Roundup. Part of the duties of a demonstrator is to donate three flies for the auction. The flies will be put into a framed collage and sold at the Fly Tyer’s Dinner on Friday, March 28th.

For my auction flies, I have chosen three flies from Mary Orvis Marbury’s magnificent 1892 book Favorite Flies and Their Histories. It’s a revolutionary book for its time and one I refer to often.

One of my flies is from the Lake Fly section, one is from the Trout Fly section, and one is from the Bass Fly section of the book. Here are the flies I have chosen:

And here are the original images from the book where they came from:

No. 64 Lord Baltimore (Lake Fly)

No. 116 Orange Coachman (Trout Fly)

No. 273 Mather (Bass Fly)

Posted on 02/22/202502/24/2025 by Darrell — 3 Comments

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 Lineup for 2025

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.

Posted on 03/28/202404/07/2024 by Darrell — 5 Comments

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.

Traditional Wet Fly Winner – Claret Bumble

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.

Tenkara Fly Winner – Quilled Body Sakasa

Presentation of Awards

The fly tying awards were presented at a banquet called The Sowbug Shindig. Here I am pictured with my award plaque.

Posted on 02/24/202402/24/2024 by Darrell — Leave a comment

2024 Sowbug Roundup – Auction Flies

Sowbug Roundup is a three day fly tying and fly fishing show that is held in Mountain Home, Arkansas. The next event will be held Mar 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of 2024.

One of my flies is from the Lake Fly section, one is from the Trout Fly section, and one is from the Bass Fly section. Here are my flies as well as the images from the book where they came from.

No. 63 Cunningham (Lake Fly)

No. 179 Original Montreal (Trout Fly)

No. 255 Jungle Cock (Bass Fly)

Posted on 02/11/202402/11/2024 by Darrell — 3 Comments

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 Lineup for 2024

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.

Tag: Sowbug Roundup

2026 Sowbug Roundup – The Delicate Dry Fly