Recently I’ve been doing hell of a lot of fly tying, I’ve been using a fly tying system that a friend of mine has devised to give the fly tier a cleaner work space. My usual fly tying workspace is a mess, a table which is tucked away in an old unused room of my house. Although it does the job, it could be a lot better.

After searching the web I found many fly tying systems which look solid and good, but not what I wanted. Most were wooden, oak, heavy and clumbersome. If I got one of the ones I saw my tying would have been confined to one room, something im not a fan of as I like to move around tying in the living room whilst watching TV at night.

I spoke to a good friend of mine who put me in touch with Lee to get The Fly Tidy  – A food grade plastic tray, which houses all my fly tying tools and vice and all the on hand materials I may use in one night. It has a raised platform which holds tools, see the picture below, and a work base which is inset around 2cm, this came in hand why I dropped my bag of tungsten beads! It helped stop the beads from rolling from the desk and kept all my material safe from blowing off. I like the white plastic, it gives a great contrast against the small flies I sometimes tie, it also helps when searching for cut off wire or tinsel which is sometimes very hard to see!

Below is an image of the fly tidy with no tools. It weights under a kilo so is easy to load up and move to tie.

My loaded fly tidy. The workstation is ideal for storing tools, fly clips and a regularly used varnish or bug bong.

The food grade plastic is great when fly tying glues are spilled, being highly resistant to corrosive materials glues such as super glue, bug bond and varnish simply whip or crack off once dry. I find the plastic keeps material to the tray and stops things like marabou blowing from the work station.

I’ve actually used this tray on my lap whilst watching TV, the solid flat station is great for resting on your legs, all that needs to be done is the vice ehad adjusted to the perfect angle for tying. Im actually contemplating taking the fly tidy away on my fishing trips, I mean how many times have you search fro a table to clamp your vice? The base is already built in with this and will keep the room much tidier.

To check out the fly tidy visit Lee’s site here – THE FLY TIDY – Im impressed!