Wednesday, April 23, 2008

To Spey or Not To Spey

I've read and heard a myriad of opinions on this topic. Is it necessary with modern equipment? Who's to say. Maybe I wouldn't be posing the question if I could actually spey cast.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Creating Demand or Demand Creating a Market

It looks like the tweed & single malt types may have to share the piscatorial pursuit with a fly rod with the overall & Bud Light crowd. Is this NASCAR meets "A River Runs Through It", or is that too stereotypical?




Below is the product's description from the good people at SAGE:


No two ways about it, bass love structure, and there are times when tournaments are won and lost on the ability to make a soft landing way back in the brambles (or mangroves).

Enter the "secret weapon". Working with a small, tight-lipped group of serious bass anglers, SAGE has developed two new rods that can drop a hair frog or an air-light diver with pinpoint accuracy and hardly a ripple- something no spinning or casting rod can achieve. From a fly fishing perspective, we're talking about effortlessly pushing big, wind-resistant bugs into tight quarters.

The Largemouth Rod (also read "Snook, Redfish and Tarpon Rod") is designed for seriously industrial strength angling, like firing rats or other maximum-bulk flies into a stiff Delta breeze, while the lighter Smallmouth rod accomplishes the same goals in more medium-duty situations. To maximize the performance of these unique rods, SAGE developed a set of radical, ultra-short, custom taper lines, which are INCLUDED in the purchase price. Also, at the request of their un-named tournament anglers, they built both of the Largemouth and Smallmouth models at 7'11" to just slide under strict rod length rules.

As it turns out, the specialized performance attributes that make these rods so effective in competitive bass angling also make them the finest tools on the planet for probing the mangroves and other heavy cover for snook and baby tarpon. Oh, and then there's the success they have seen with these rods throwing huge flies for pike and muskies as well.

These rods are rated simply as the Smallmouth Rod and the Largemouth Rod. The accompanying lines are rated at 290 grains for the smallmouth and 330 grains for the largemouth. This basically equates to a 7-8 wt on the smallmouth rod and an 9-10 wt rod on the Largemouth rod. Although this may seem a bit heavy....remember that they are primarily short, precision casting and "fish fighting" rods. No matter, they may turn out to be some of the best technical "boat" rods ever made!

More on the hows and whys later.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Innovation

It's quite interesting how old products are constantly re-invented. A great example of this is Scientific Anglers' (a division of 3M) new twist on flyline. The old axiom was that flyline needed to be slick in order to be effective. The good people at 3M found that if you apply the same thinking that goes into golfballs to flylines, you come up with a brand-new twist on an already existing product. This new line is called Sharkskin--flyline that is dimpled and textured, rather than smooth.

For flyfishers, just like golfers, distance is a hotbutton. A product marketed towards the flyfishers in the world that promises greater distance, greater accuracy, and ease of use looks like a slamdunk.

This is a great blog

Please check out this blog, the writing and content are quite good.



http://donttrustsnakes.blogspot.com/