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Locations — 2 Comments
15
Jun 12

Fly Fishing Poet and the Salt

Matt, aka the Fly Fishing Poet, got down to Florida to go throw in the salt for the first time.  I haven’t made it down to the Keys since I was 10 (I loved in then… wanted to be a treasure hunter as a kid, which I know makes no sense as a mountain bound Californian).

A damn fine read. Here’s a taste…

Islamorada, I’m here and everything about you is foreign to me. Timeless retro hotel and diner and marina signs. Languid, saronged women in their generous brown skin and strong, salty women in their salty brown skin. Bar-top sweat-rings telling stories between drinks. Backcountry islands hovering on the teal horizon.

Check out the full story here (and it is worth it).

Go time.

 

PS – Matt has a story in Pulp Fly, which you should totally buy (for Kindle and anything that can handle Kindle books, like iPads).

Locations — 1 Comment
13
Jun 12

Fine Work Eduardo

I totally ripped this off his facebook page.  What a fine, fine picture this is.  Eduardo prowls the waters of South Florida with Biscayne Bay being in his back yard.

I really need to get out there.

Great Picture.

 

Photo by Alex.

Gear — 7 Comments
11
Jun 12

What not to bring

There are lots of things that you SHOULD consider bringing with you on your bonefishing trip (I love Desitin, for example).  Flatswalker had some thoughts about what you SHOULD NOT bring with you. See the full list here.

Some of Flats Walker’s no-no’s:

  • Sandals. I don’t care what you call them or what brand they are, you’ll regret it.
  • Grey polarized sunglasses (unless you’re legitimately color blind, then maybe).
  • Rod tubes… I mean, why?

What are some of the things you urge people to not to bring?

One thing I’d add to the list…

Chardonnay.

Yeah... not bonefishing...

Oh… and Bananas. Of course.

 

All the other stuff — 2 Comments
10
Jun 12

“The Thor of Crustaceans”

I’m from California, but with a name like Bjorn you know the headline “The Thor of Crustaceans” caught my attention.

Of course, we’re talking about the Mantis Shrimp.

Mantis Shrimp, are, as you might imagine, prey of bonefish and it turns out, they are kind of badass too. The article talks about how their armored weapons/claws could be the key to new, stronger body armor.  Pretty cool.

I can give a pretty convincing account of the life of a mayfly or a caddis or a stonefly, but I know just about zilch about the actual prey of bonefish.

I should work on that.  It might just come in handy when I’m tying up flies or, ya know, trying to fool bonefish with imitations of their prey.

Locations — No Comments
06
Jun 12

Tosh Brown goes to Andros South

I actually saw this via The Trout Underground.  Tosh Brown is a pretty stellar guy by all accounts.  He was recently down at Andros South, a place close to my heart.  The weather didn’t play nicely with the crew down there, but the photos are simply wonderful and they do, in fact, feature bonefish, so, it wasn’t a total failure.

Well, from the perspective of six blokes fishing Andros Island between May 20-25, 2012, that’s a big honkin’ load of crap. We saw the sunset on three different evenings and woke each of the following mornings to rain coming down in sheets. Thankfully, bonefish still show up quite nicely over white sand on cloudy days, and Andros has neither a shortage of white sand or bonefish.

A grey day in Andros

Conservation — 4 Comments
05
Jun 12

Puerto Rico – An end to gillnets

It’s just a damn fine idea.  It’s a shinny, glittery, warm and fuzzy idea.  Gillnets are bad, bad news.

From what I’ve read the ban on gill nets in Florida had a direct and sudden impact on the inshore fisheries where redfish were concerned.

So, here’s a petition to ban gill nets in Puerto Rico.  Now… it’s in Spanish, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it is about.

 

Fish Tails — 5 Comments
03
Jun 12

Important stuff

I’ve been trying to get the girl a fish for a while down here.  Sadly, the fishing wilderness of the South Bay (SF South Bay) is not exactly furtile. Kind of sucks, actually.  Still, I’ve been trying.  I’ve thrown at carp with her and even goldfish, but it just hasn’t been happening.

My little lady

Finally, I got the girl a fish down here.  Went to a reservoir that rented boats and we set out for a three hour tour.  She liked the boat, which I got to row around.  She did ask about every five minutes if we had caught anything yet and then why we hadn’t caught anything yet. Motivating.

Just a girl and her fish.

When it finally came, she loved it. I put it in a bucket and she got to see it and touch it and really see the fish.  She wants to go back, which makes me happy.

Tactics — 2 Comments
02
Jun 12

Capt. Clint Kemp casting

Here’s a little video that features Capt. Clint Kemp from Black Fly doing some casting.

He’s pretty good at this stuff.

Notice how high his hand is when he starts his haul.  That’s important.  The further up you start the haul, the more haul there is. I had that tip down in Cuba… I think from John Hudgens. It works.

 

 

Gear — No Comments
31
May 12

A conversation with the Albright President

I have sounded off on Albright a few times.  Their marketing drives me kind of crazy with a constant “70% off sale” that isn’t so much a sale as it is pretty much what their every day prices are.

Instead of just continuing to gripe about it, I decided to write a note through their customer service email form.

Funny thing.  The President of the company wrote back. After a couple exchanged emails my phone rang and I got to talk to the Prez. himself.

I expressed how much I disliked their constant “sale” approach and the silliness of the $1,000 MSRP on the EXT fly rod.  He admitted that the $1,000 MSRP was sloppy and they fixed that a while back. He also revealed something that I found pretty surprising.  Their strategy works.  They have something like 10K or 15K names on their email list and they get something like a 20% open rate.  Now, knowing something about email marketing I have to say… Whoa.  That’s actually phenomenal.

They feel pretty strongly about the quality of their gear. The sticks are made in Korea but all the components are made in the US and they don’t pull punches with the components. See… wouldn’t that be nice to hear about?

One thing you have to give Albright… they were way ahead of most of the market on selling direct.  Now everyone is doing it.  More and more companies are doing it.  Not everyone does… not yet, but that the trend.  Of course, the shops are slowly going away, but that is probably a trend well beyond just fly fishing.

The 70% off sale does something else too… it plays into the Grouponization of the consumer.  People don’t pay retail anymore.  They wait, they look for deals.

I’ve been looking for someone who owns one of the EXT rods. I want to know what the consumer has to say.  It could be that I even take one to Belize when I go in September. I really want to see how it stacks up.  If you have one, give a shout. I’d love to get your feedback.

One way or another, it was nice to talk directly to the source.

By the way… I actually own an Albright GP.

 

Conservation — 2 Comments
30
May 12

O’io… the gamefish

From the outrage over the bonefish netting a few days ago has picked up some steam.  There’s an on-line petition to ask for bonefish to be moved from the “kill as many as you can catch” category to the “gamefish” category, meaning they would not be in markets any longer.

Hatch Magazine has a story about it…

Opponents of net harvesting of Hawaiian bonefish, known locally as o’io, are attempting to have these fish placed under gamefish status by Hawaii’s governor. Once under gamefish status, killing bonefish would not become illegal, but Hawaiian bonefish would be harvestable only when caught by rod and reel, thus ending the ability of local fisherman to harvest large catches of bonefish via netting.

Read the story here.

Of course, this has been going on for a long time.  I ran a story about the netting bonefish on Kauai a while back. Bonefish have been eaten by the locals and natives for a long, long time.  However, modern tactics (like nylon nets) have the potential to wipe the fishery out.  Seems like it is time to do something about it.

Go ahead… sign it.  Only 296 had done so when I last saw it. We can do better.

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