Master Fly Competition

[hwchubb]

This past weekend and next, several fly shops in the Bend area are sponsoring a Master Fly competition, with the finals a couple of weekends from now. In a nutshell it plays on the Chopped / Iron Chef idea, where all the tiers get the same "mystery ingredients" and have a certain time limit to come up with their best answer. I thought I'd look into doing the same thing here, and there is also some interest in the Reno area. Tim Fox was open to holding one competition at Fishwest, and I wanted to gauge interest in it here. Enough interest and I 'll delve a bit deeper.

Anyone? Anyone?

[Mike O]

That sounds cool!! I am interested

[JasonB]

Probably way above my skills for now, but I love the idea. I would probably be interested in participating in one at some point in the future, after having a few more seasons tying practice. Sounds like a lot of fun,
JB

[JD]

Would be much more interested in seeing Fishwest host some premier tiers holding workshops than something like this.

[Tony Buzolich]

This kind of sounds fun to me. Like using the format on "Chopped" though sounds a little tougher and would probably stop a lot of tiers from competing unless they had categories in which to tie.

Categories would have to be something like,,,, "Dry Fly", "Wet Fly", "Nymph". Then what about something totally different from this such as "Baitfish patterns", " Billfish patterns", or " Topwater and Popper patterns" ?

Without some form of category separation you'd have some really good tiers like Bob Clouser or Popovics failing when it came to tying #16 or #18 BWO's.

Just like on "Chopped", some folks are really good with deserts but have no idea what an appetizer even is.

[JasonB]

This kind of sounds fun to me. Like using the format on "Chopped" though sounds a little tougher and would probably stop a lot of tiers from competing unless they had categories in which to tie.

Categories would have to be something like,,,, "Dry Fly", "Wet Fly", "Nymph". Then what about something totally different from this such as "Baitfish patterns", " Billfish patterns", or " Topwater and Popper patterns" ?

Without some form of category separation you'd have some really good tiers like Bob Clouser or Popovics failing when it came to tying #16 or #18 BWO's.

Just like on "Chopped", some folks are really good with deserts but have no idea what an appetizer even is.

Very good points there. Perhaps a species could be designated with each challenge?

[Hogan Brown]

That would be fun to be part of. I would be interested in participating if it comes to together.

[Dan Harrison]

Good concept. Think it would be fun.

[rippinstreamers]

Sounds great, I know most of us of had plenty of time to sharpen our skills as of late, it would be nice to be challenged into tying something completely different than you have for lets say the past 3 months.

[hwchubb]

It looks like the one up north ( you can check out discussions on Westfly and on the Master Fly Facebook page) was actually just a single fly, I thought about maybe doing a dry, wet, and open round, but still very preliminary. I also have a feeling that originality counts more than tying skill alone. I was at a fly shop in New York about 35 years ago watching Poul Jorgenson (incredible salmon tier) and Dave Whitlock tying. Poul showed Dave a picture of a fly he had done, Dave commented "nice picture - crappy fly, though" and Poul threw a bunch of his trimmings in front of Dave and said "well, this is the crap you tie with". Five minutes later, Dave had fashioned a beautiful Red Fox type nymph from the pile. This event reminded me of that.