Total mess. Just stuffing flies anywhere in the heat of the moment. Reorganize 2 or 3 times a season or if I'm traveling.

Man I stab myself on nymphs every trip because I cut the top one off and say "well, dang I'd hate to waste that 20inches of tippet between these two, and I know I'll fish this same rig again later, so I throw it into a (selected at random) pocket on my vest. So i have about 30 nymphs and drys with 100 yrds of tippet floating through my vest invariably jabbing me and getting wasted. My boxes on the other hand stay rather neat as I NEVER end up putting flies back in them until they are basically empty and I gotta dig threw pockets and wool patches etc to restock them. I got big on using one or two tiny boxes for my trips and just having like 10 or 275 of them for different regions or seasons or rivers. works pretty well until you've got a box full of size 18-20 BWO parachutes and emergers in the summer in Alaska when all you want is 4-6 flesh and 87 different handpainted beads. But whats perfect right? At least I'm fishing. I had a vest for 9 years with 20 odd pockets on it, so when I was "cleaning it out" I'd empty the pockets typically used and resort/organize them so I'd be "ready to go" (whatever that means) But all those other pockets were the real prize becuase you never knew what you'd find in them (2 year old sandwiches and beer, 6 inch long furstrip streamers, 5 years of fishing liscences from 20 or so states, money, bullets (not sure why) etc.

Pretty neat. Not as neat as some, but all like flies are at least in same row. I already have a hard enough time deciding on the fly, so searching for a while would make it even harder.

I'm the clip and go type as well. Cip one off and just drop it in the front vest pocket, after about 4 or 5 trips I'll clean it out. If the tippet gets in the way of closing the box when the fly is put back, then I'll clip it, of not, I'll clip it before I tie it back on the line.

Open up any of my foam fly boxes and you'll normally see perfect order on one side and mishmash on the other. Rigs get thrown into a vest pocket with cut off tag ends figuring I'll use them again ... rarely happens so I should just cut the tippet off right away. Pretty much everything in my life is the same way, order mixed with chaos and hoards of stuff I might someday use.

One irritating problem ... my foam boxes get water inside and I forget to dry them out. I have reached for flies and found the hooks rusted right off.

Organization waste valuable fishing time.

Here's an idea that works great on multi-fly rigs. Use a picture wallet- you know with the plastic pages... roll the rig around your 4 fingers leaving the dry fly (if using one) as the last. Place the rig in the page rolled nicely and hook the dry fly through the top of the page top so it protrudes out of the wallet. Store the wallet upright in a high chest pocket.. allowing the dry flies not to be squished. Works for me and the plastic is very soft so it is easy to remove the dry flies.

fly boxes are messy. to combat this i have a system i use the Haley's Comet

All of my fishing stuff is packed to perfection in March and slowly becomes unrecognizable by fall. Right now its an unholy mess in my living room floor because I got the urge to kill geese over the weekend. It was either throw everything in the house or stack decoys on top of everything.