As Rocky music played in the background, our first ever fly tying championship took place this past Thursday evening. It was an awesome night of “expert” fly tying and just plain fun.  As you may know, every other Thursday night the FATC gets together for our fly tying sessions. This has been going on for over a year and a half now and each session we learn a new fly and techniques on how to best tie this fly.  All that knowledge came together for our first ever FATC fly tying championship.

Each tier would have to use the skills that they have learned over the past year.  Each contestant had to “blindly” pick a bag of materials of which they had to use each piece of material somewhere in the creation of their fly.  Each bag had different materials. Of course, there was a lot of whining when they saw the materials they had to tie with – but when the timer went off the whining ended in total concentration from each tier. They had five minutes to look over their materials and put ideas of the perfect fly in their heads. Then they had just 45 minutes to create their masterpiece. Each tier also had to name their fly.

The champion and runner-up will be announced at the end of the month as YOU get the opportunity to vote for your favorite fly. A picture each fly and it’s name will be put on our website and we are asking each of our FATC members to vote on their “favorite fly”.  The flies will be on the website next week and remain until the end of the month when the contest ends.  The champion will win a fly tying tool holder to add to his vise AND 12 flies tied by the Sensei and a fly box to put them in.  The runner-up will get a fly tying tool holder for his vise.

Here are some pictures of the guys hard at work. We had 13 brave souls compete in our first championship. WHO WILL WIN? That is up to you!!