Gaps To Make, Gaps to Fill

My fly boxes tend to be a huge mess by December. It's a cyclical thing. I generally am running out of tippet, low on some fly patterns, and in need of new tapered leaders by the last month of the year. An interesting question: how much line and how many flies does someone who fishes between 250 and 300 days a year go through? I'd say about a mile of nylon, fluorocarbon, dacron, and fly line, and about 300 flies. I don't always loose or destroy one fly in a day, but there are days when I loose or destroy ten. So, when December comes there are are usually some holes and my boxes are a little less than organized. There'll be a single chewed up mouse in with a bunch of little used soft hackle wets, an egg tucked into the same slot as a Parmachenee Wulff, an unused Usual in a row of Ausable Bombers in various degrees of disrepair. This is what my small stream box looks like now, after some organization:

So... yikes! There are some spaces to fill. Lots of work to be done here. This is the time of year that some call "tying season", as if winter is for tying flies and not fishing. I hate that idea. Fishing season runs from the first day of a new year right up until that year's last day, and so does the tying season. If you are serious about fly tying you should be at the vice at least once a week. And if you are me, you can't go a week without fishing. It's been four days for me right now and I'm pretty miserable. There was a short period of time yesterday when I probably should have been out, but I've been sick and it's hard for me to motivate myself when 1: I have a huge migraine, and 2: it's really gross outside. There isn't a tying season,  but there are tying days. And these last few days have let me reorganize and fill some gaps. Here are some boxes at different stages of replenishment:

One large gap in my arsenal manifested itself a couple weeks ago. So I've been tying stuff like this:

What these are going to get used for, you will all just have to wait and see.