Cleaning Up The Tying Area

For the past few months, supplies have rolled in and orders have rolled out.  Thus the tying desk has become a wreck.  Of course, it doesn't help that I share my area with the wife's beading hobby, the spare bed and the Wii which the kids use on a daily basis.  Naturally all this stuff leads to the room being cluttered with crap from each and every member of the household.  The younger one leaves his toys in there that need to be fixed.  I swear at times he is like the Hulk.  He doesn't know his own strength and as such requires Daddy to fix everything.  He is at that age where apparently everything can be fixed with glue or so he thinks.  The older one leaves her stuff in there cause she is simply too lazy to pick it up.  If this is the future of American, the future of America looks bleak.  And no this isn't just because of my child.  I see this kind of thing daily in my full time job.  I found mail in there today that the wife left in there along with the assorted other crap.  It amazes me what makes its way into the room.  So, I put on Facebook today on the J&M Flies site that it was time to make the poppers.  The problem was that I couldn't even get to the crap to make the poppers because of everything that was in the way.  Therefore, I spent several hours today cleaning and organizing the area some what.  I am not even sure if I made a dent in it.  It looks the same just with some new labels.  I give up.  I was able to work on poppers though.  We have two wheels of poppers a going currently with multiple colors on them.  I should be able to finish both wheels tomorrow.  My back was killing me today and has been since the weekend.  It sucks getting old and lifting 325 pounds of dead weight just didn't work out well for me at work the other day.  Oh well.  Here are some photos of the tying area over the past few months:

Notice the toys?

A close up of the island of broken toys 

Kitchen Chef that needs fixing 

Wheel of Poppers 

Runs of Poppers 

Everyone needs foam and lots of it 

A drawer full of flash for bees and persuaders 

A list of what is done and what still needs to be done and everyone needs a rubber chicken in their tying area

Chenille-boxes of chenille 

Foam, dubbing and chenille-did I mention there is foam in here? 

Beads, beads, beads 

Coffee-a must for the tying desk 

Wheels of poppers 

Tying is never complete without my furry friend either in his chair, on the bed or on the floor apparently

J&M Flies A Look Back

Well people it has been a little over a year since the wife and I started J&M Flies.  On March 26 of 2011, I walked in to the local Orvis store to buy some supplies.  I had taken some flies with me to match the materials I needed.  Upon showing the flies to the owner in my quest for a certain material, the first thing he asked was "Where did you buy these flies?"  I explained that I made them and thus began a discussion that would eventually lead to the creation of J&M Flies.

In the past year we have done several orders for the local Orvis store, we are currently working on another, a number of orders for fellow bloggers, partnered with J Stockard Fly Fishing and Texas River Bum, sold flies as gifts, sent flies around the world, and made special flies upon request.  In an effort to track what we are selling so we can see what the most popular fly is and what materials we need to buy (anything to buy more tying supplies or to justify my spending to the wife) we created a spreadsheet to track our orders.  So in the past year, we have sold  hundreds of flies.

While that may not seem like a lot, please don't forget that we hand paint all of our poppers.  It takes more than a week to make one popper.  Of course this isn't a week of continuous painting and tying.  Our process takes a while because we seal the bodies to ensure they float well with several coats of pre-sealer and then let the bodies cure.  We then do at least three coats of the base coat and let the bodies cure.  Next it is time to stipple.  After the stippling is done, we do four coats of gloss varnish to ensure that the poppers have a high gloss finish combined with durability to withstand the warm water fish.  Again, we let the bodies cure.   Then it is time to tie them up with the calf tail, hackle and rubber legs.  So as you can see, it does take a while to make these poppers but it is well worth it.  Well I think so and I would hope that those who have gotten flies from us before would also agree.

As we move forward and begin our second year, we are both happy, excited and nervous about what the future may hold.  Here is hoping for a profit.....

Another Company We Have Partnered With

I am happy to announce that J&M Flies has now partnered with Texas River Bum to sell some of our poppers.  We will be selling the Fire Tiger, Sunrise Slammer, Oriole and the Yellow/Black/Yellow gurgler.  For those that have not been to the Texas River Bum site, do yourself a favor and check them out here  David Ellzey is the owner/operator and Editor in Chief of the site.  This site deals with the Hill Country of Texas and the adventures of several people who write them.  One of them, Brandon Robinson also created and is the admin for the Bass On The Fly group on Facebook.  If you are on Facebook and love chasing the green trout, check the group out here  It is a great place to meet other fly fishermen from the dark side of fly fishing from around the world.  You can see our flies in David's store located here

All in all we are very excited about this new adventure.  We now sell our flies from the blog, at two local fly shops, and two websites.  Aaaahhhh....it feels great to be wanted!

2 Orders Filled and Headed Out

I totally forgot to put these up a few days ago.  I have been sitting at the vise for over a week now just cranking flies out before I go to my full time job.  I filled some orders as well this past week.  Here are two of them.  The first one up contains a gaggle of gurglers as well as half a dozen Orioles for North Dakota.  The second is a half a dozen poppers for Texas.  Both places are new to us, having never shipped there before, so I am curious to see how the flies do.  I love seeing what others catch using our flies.

As you can see we shipped two of every color we make in size 4 for the gurglers.  Hence the gaggle of gurglers...

Next are the assortment of half a dozen poppers heading to Texas

Working on Poppers

Currently we are doing a run of Orioles.  Six of the size 8's are already spoken for.  Claim your Oriole now!  We can always do another run.  Off to prep more bodies...

Pond X

Got out this past Wednesday with Greg at Pond X.  This is the same pond we fish that is located in a neighboring county.  I managed to land 15 largemouth and one bluegill.  At some point, I have got to figure out how to fish this thing with the fly rod.  I have done it before but man is it hard.  There is usually so much underbrush and growth around the pond that it becomes impossible to swing a fly.  The few times I have fished it with the fly rod, I have almost always spent more time untangling my line from the trees and bushes than I have spent with the line in the water.  The fish though are always hungry and some can be rather large.  Very few people fish this pond.  It is on private land and it requires a hike to get back to it.  Given its location, there are a ton of ticks and chiggers in the area as well.  I picked off five on Wednesday.  I hate ticks but the fishing is so good that I keep coming back.  It is like crack.  I wish when I was there that I had more time to fish it as I would love to get my float tube out and use it at the pond.  Then I could use a fly rod and crush the bass!  Here are the fish porn photos:

Meet The Oriole

Given that we live in Maryland and that we needed a name for our new popper, our kids decided to name it the Oriole after Maryland's state bird.  Not a bad name.  The colors do match the bird and it is something different.  So.....here is the Oriole in size 10: