Review – Fox Fly Boxes

Fox Fly Boxes

Fox Fly Boxes

Overview

The Fox Fly boxes have been on the market for several years now although I only started using them a couple of years ago but I really have been very satisfied with them in use.

The retail price ranges from shop to shop, and whilst the RRP is £ 9.99 you can get them on eBay for anything upwards of about £ 5.00 apiece.

The design is something of a break with tradition from the more often seen aluminium (Wheatley) type of boxes, or indeed the foam-filled wooden boxes, but is in my opinion a forward leap both in design and usability.

With dimensions of 6″ x 4″ x 1″ they will fit easily into either your tackle bag or your waistcoat, and they are not too thick so they don’t bulge the pocket, but at the same time they are deep enough to accommodate a double row of reasonably bushy dry flies.

The Fox Box will float if accidentally dropped into the water, even when fully loaded with flies, although it is not recommended to leave it in the water too long.

The inside of the box is of a non-absorbent rubberised material that holds the flies between two ridges or wings. This design keeps the flies tightly in place even if you drop the box on the ground.

Open it up and there is space for 136 flies per box for flies up to about size 6’s, anything larger does take more than one position in a row.

The 8 rows per side are arranged horizontally staggered, alternately in 9 spaces and then 8 spaces so there is more than enough room per line to keep a good selection of individual patterns and in different sizes.

Staggered holders

The boxes come in a range of different colours and I prefer to keep different types of fly in different colours; Burgundy for Dry Flies, Dark Green for Buzzers, Dark Blue for Nymphs, Light Blue for Wet Flies, Yellow for Sea Trout patterns etc, so I can dig into my tackle bag and select the right box for a given situation.

You can’t have enough dry flies

I use them more for storage purposes as I typically buy, (or tie) my flies in dozens (yes, I am that old fashioned thank you) so usually I’ll put 8 or 9 into the Fox Box and the remainder go into my ‘ready for use’ bamboo boxes made by Turrall of which I keep one for Wet flies and one for Dry flies constantly in my waistcoat pockets.

Trout feed about 90% on Buzzers and Nymphs, so you can’t have too many of either, can you?

These Fox Fly boxes are very well made, but if I had to find a fault then it might be that the steel hinge-pin seems to have been cut a little short on some of my boxes, mind you that really is a less than significant point. The hinge mechanism still works perfectly well, the locking clasp is a good tight fit and the quality control in manufacture is very good.

Sea trout flies: Even relatively large flies fit well

All in all the Fox Fly Box represents an very good inexpensive alternative to the ‘traditional’ boxes, made of good strong materials that are built to last and offering the possibility of colour coding your fly boxes to avoid all that frustrating and time consuming searching for a particular type or pattern.

Overall rating from me is 91/2 out of 10 and it would have been 10 out of 10 had the hinge pins on a few of my boxes not been a little short.

Regarding Value for Money, and when comparing to the Wheatley type of boxes then the Fox Box scores 10/10 in my estimation.

	Peter Jacob’s Verdict
	After a period of extended use I would thoroughly recommend these boxes to any fly angler out there who is looking to either get more organised, or simply make a change from tradition – and I bet most people who know me would never have expected to hear me say that.