An Encyclopedia of Fishing Flies is an elegantly designed print book to iPhone application translation. It contains over 1000 flies including pictures, recipes and nice, closeup photography. In addition, there are even chapters on the history of fly fishing as it relates to flies and a section on the parts of a fly.
The photos are framable quality and allow you to zoom in easily to see the details of the fly. Another great feature of the app is the ability to search for names, category of fly, or author.
The fly gallery is categorized by type which makes it easy to find the fly you need if you would rather browse or don’t know the exact name. When you do identify the fly, you can view the recipe including tips on tying the fly. You can also save the fly to your favorites for easy access later.
Another fun feature that I’m spending lots of time with is the Quiz feature. It’s a timed test that checks your knowledge of either flies, history or what the fly imitates. I need to do some work before I would be considered an expert. I guess I’m a flytyingwannabe too.
I’ve looked at other fly tying applications on the iPhone and this one, by far is my favorite. There are no annoying upsells as all the flies are already there. It’s probably the most professionally done iOS application in the fly fishing genre too. As someone in the software, web and mobile industry, it’s so nice to see a well down fly fishing oriented application. I’m really hoping that they create an iPad version as I keep my iPad on my tying desk. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the iPhone version. Now if I could just get some more time tying…..