Get five women on a river and inside of an hour you'll know exactly who you're dealing with.
Not because anybody announced it. Because the bags came out.
We narrowed it to five fly boxes, and the five women who pack them.
One of them is you, one of them is your bestie, and you'll have a name in mind for the other three before you finish reading.
The Planner - Most likely to own a label maker. Streamers, dries, nymphs; everything has a place, and that place is labeled. But the fly box is the least of it. She knows what should be hatching, what the flows are doing, how many miles you're covering, where the nearest fly shop is, and where everyone is getting drinks afterward. Ask her if she has a size 16 and she doesn't check. She already knows.
The Puck Queen - Pucks loose in the bottom of the bag with a granola bar wrapper and spare sock stuck together like peanut butter and jelly. Flies in baggies or in the little plastic pucks they originally came in. The Planner genuinely cannot understand how a person lives like this. But then the Puck Queen digs around in her bag for four minutes and comes up with the exact fly everyone needs. Her chaos works.
The Quirky One - Ties her own flies out of materials that are not supposed to be materials. She once made a fly out of her dog's hair. But it isn't just the flies. She has her own look, fully covered, sun safe, and still somehow cute. She does not care what anybody else is wearing. Branded gear? Never heard of her. Weird fly, weird outfit, fish in the net. She's the reminder that there's no one right way to look like an angler.
The Beginner - She starts the day with an almost empty box and ends it carrying flies from five other women, somebody's hand-me-down pack, and more advice than she can possibly hold. Every woman on that river was her once, and everybody loves teaching her because of it. By day two she's asking better questions and her excitement is contagious. She reminds the rest of us why we started.
The Over-Packer - Packed for a five-mile day like it's three months in the backcountry. Not organized, just covered. She brought the fly for the water you're on, the fly for the water you're not on, and a spare of both. Don't even get her started on snacks. Oatmeal creme pie for the one who skipped breakfast. Sour gummy worms for the 2 p.m. crash. And a banana that has somehow survived four miles without a bruise.
The Planner and the Puck Queen drive each other up the wall and need each other for exactly that reason. The Quirky One keeps everybody loose enough to try the strange fly and wear the funky jacket. The Beginner takes a little something from every woman in the group and hands back more than she knows. And the Over-Packer, snacks and all, will save every single person on that trip before it's over.
They teach each other, annoy each other, and make each other better. That's not an accident. That's a crew.
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