June 4-5, 2022, I participated in a 2-day, 2-man team multi-species flyfishing tournament. It's an annual event called Dally's All Species Odyssey, based out of Dally's Ozark Fly Fisher fly shop in Cotter, Arkansas. This was the first time my partner and I had fished it. My friend and fishing buddy Hamilton Bell was our team leader.... He lives in the area, and he really researched, practiced-fished places, and did everything he could to develop a solid game plan for the tournament.
The tournament organizer has a great write-up of the results at this link:
https://ozarkflyfisherjournal.wordpress.com/2022/06/06/odyssey-22-won-and-done/
The goal of the tournament is to catch as many species from a list of 33 different fish species. Most species caught, wins. In the event of ties, each species is assigned a point value, generally based on how common they are or how easy they are to catch. That is to say, the harder they are to catch, the more points. That's the general premise. The most points wins the tie-breaker.
Below are MOST of the points for each species...there are 2 more species I didn't get in the screen capture:
The tournament began with a "shotgun start" at the fly shop at Noon on Saturday. We could fish until 8pm, and could not submit any fish pictures after that time.
Without analyzing our game plan, we did invest in time driving far from the fly shop. By the end of Day 1, we were tied for First Place with 9 species! (We are Team "Fly or Die".)
After a short night of sleeping, Day 2 rules were that we could fish from 6am until Noon, and had to be back at the fly shop by 12:30pm. One team had a great day and ended with a tournament record 16 species! We were tied for 2nd place with one other team with 12 species each. The other team won the tie-breaker by having just 5 more points than our team. So close! :) So we ended with 3rd Place. Of course we were targeting the 1st Place win, I'm happy we made top 3. There were 20 Teams.
Species we caught were:
1. Bowfin
3. Redear Sunfish
4. Crappie (black)
5. Green Sunfish
6. Longear Sunfish
7. Pickerel (grass)
8. Rainbow Trout
9. Brown Trout
10. Largemouth Bass
11. Ozark Bass
12. Smallmouth Bass
We caught other species that didn't count, and sometimes caught larger fish than what is pictured above...but size didn't matter. Once we caught a species and submitted it, there was no reason to submit a larger example...and every reason to move on to trying for the next different species!
It was a really fun experience. All participants received a REALLY nice swag bag. Our 3rd Place Prize was my partner and I each got a custom color Nautilus XM fly reel!
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