Ah, moving. There are few moments in life that are more stressful and chaotic. Moving is essentially the exact opposite of fly fishing.
If and when you do have to move, you are going to take your angling gear with you. Sure, you could just let the movers have their way with your rods and fly collections. Or, you could treat your valuable reels and even more valuable hackles in the exact way you pack shoe racks and pie pans and photo albums. I think you can see that there is a better way.
I’ve moved a handful of times. And I’m in the process of moving. While I don’t intend to leave my friends to unload the truck while I hit the river, I also don’t intend to lose or lose track of my fly fishing gear for weeks or months. So while moving is stressful and chaotic, there are a few things you can do to keep your equipment safe and at hand.
Here are four things to consider:
You don’t have to be super careful… but you do need to use a Sharpie.
Outdoor gear is remarkably durable. And what can get scratched or snapped usually comes with some sort of protection. Virtually my entire fishing closet could get dumped into a box and thrown on the back of a truck. Reels live in cases. Rods live in tubes. The biggest danger, as far as I can tell, is from various liquids and epoxies leaking. A Ziploc bag will do the trick there. But, use a marker liberally. Mark up the boxes with your fishing stuff. Baby albums and fine China aren’t going to be what you’re looking for. You will want to be able to easily identify where your salmon reel and flies are ASAP.
You have a chance to get rid of some junk.
Why do you have all those fly line spools? And why are they all in the boxes that they came in? And when are you really going to use seven of them? Don’t forget the five quarter-full bottles of floatant, the decades’ worth of printed-out licenses, and the rod you bought at the yard sale that you plan on refinishing… eight years ago. Purge. If you haven’t needed it, you’re probably not going to need it. Plus, now you can say “I did throw away a lot of my old fishing stuff.”
You should give things a special place.
Although I still maintain that your fly fishing gear is durable, it doesn’t mean that it is indestructible. Moisture, heat, and critters will all have their way with your fishing stuff. Keep the boxes, or better yet – bins, off the floor. Use some silica or Boveda packs. Pay for climate control in the storage (“It is for your wedding dress, honey!”). And put in a little forethought as to where things will go: closer to the door means easier to grab.
You have a chance to see how you really don’t have a lot of gear.
“Tell my wife!” you say. Well, I’m not talking about the price tag associated with your fly fishing equipment. I have quite a bit of stuff. But it all fits into a few normal-sized moving boxes (excluding canoes, waders, etc.). This should actually be an encouragement to you. While you need a dozen boxes to move your kitchen from point A to point B, almost all your fly fishing materials can fit in the back of a sedan. So keep up the good work. And get yourself a new fly box for your efforts.
I’m sure there are some really helpful hints that cover which diameter of bubble wrap is ideal, or what kind of packing peanut is the most environmentally friendly. But sometimes there are some big picture items that are worth our time.