The Fed Ex guy kept it late, which made it interesting. In the end, he made it here about 6:45 PM. Sure, I don’t leave for Belize for another 6 days, but I really wanted the weekend to do a little casting and it looks like that is going to happen. The box that arrived this evening was from Bainbridge Island, WA and if you are a fly fisherman that means Sage. Two brand new Xi3‘s were in the box, a 7 and a 10. I was a little surprised that the rods were brand new. These are loaners, after all… I have to send the things back after the trip, so I figured I’d get a rod that had been loaned in the past. Not so… these were spanking new with that new-rod smell… well… there really wasn’t a smell, but ya know what I mean.
Two beautiful sage sticks
In other news, I’ll actually be bringing along a third rod to demo… this rod will be the Orvis Helios in an 8 weight. I just did an interview with Steve Hemkens at Orvis for the Blog and he offered to loan me some gear. Having the 7 and 10 slots filled, I figured it would be better to go with an 8, instead of putting the Helios and Xi3 into some contrived duel. I am looking forward to doing some test driving in the coming days and putting them through the paces in Belize.
I’m just about done tying flies for the trip… I added another 8 or so flies today to the two crammed bonefish/permit boxes and am at about 148 flies now. My guess would be I’d use 10. So… over provisioned a tad, both on the fly front and probably on rods. Both are good problems to have.
- If you liked the story above, check out these stories below
- The Helios - A review of sorts (0.539)
- Some Sage Sticks for Belize (0.417)
- Rent the Rod? (0.372)
Tags: Belize, Fly rods, flyfishing, Helios, Orvis, Sage, Steve Hemkens, Xi3
Last week I had a guy over here and we were talking flies. I told him to get his box and I went and got mine. Well he came out with 7 boxes of flies. Now I’m not talking small boxes but very large boxes. Of course I show up with this one little box that has maybe 8 flies in it and 3 of them were for trevally. He was fishing on his own and never caught a fish. We on the other hand have the pictures of some trophy bonefish all on my meager fly collection. It’s not how may you tie it’s what you tie. It’s all about the fun so go get’em and then I want to read all about it.
Really, I enjoy tying… I am not going to be able to fish every day, but I can tie just about every day. I know that I won’t use even a small number of the flies, but, ya know… tying is its own thing.
You will certainly get to read about the upcoming trip… which is in less than a week!