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Locations — 4 Comments
15
Dec 10

Nature is a trip – Vallarta

I’m down in Vallarta for a long anticipated family trip.  We love playing in the pools, lounging about and having some good quality time together.  I, as you might expect, bring a fly rod or two along (in this case, two loaners from Orvis, the Hydros and their Access in an 8).  In years past I’ve come to have some pretty good fishing at the river mouth that separates Puerto Vallarta from Nuevo Vallarta.  I’ve caught dinner there a couple of times and really had started to get it dialed.

This year… not so much.

Some storms came though during the summer and my guess is a few million cubic yards of sand got moved around.  What I used to know is now a total mystery again.  There is a little bay, where once there was open water.  The river now has two mouths and I can’t even get to the place where I had had such good luck for the past couple of years.

Amazing how much nature can alter things in the span of a few months.

Now, I can’t find the big fish. The little fish?  Oh yeah… I have those DIALED.  I’ve caught dozens of little Jacks… little… ounces, not pounds.

After my 25 pound Jack in Belize... this is a little underwhelming.

I repeated an old mistake and asked the concierge if they had any information on fly fishing.  No… I could take a party boat, but no… they don’t know anyone who has a panga who could take me out in the bay to cast for some Jacks. However, I also asked one of the doormen, Jorge.  He knows.  He knows a bunch of folks and he and I, in theory, are going to go fishing with a friend of his on Thursday.  I will need to pay for gas, but that’s it.  We’ll see how that goes.  I’m looking forward to it.

Fish Tails — No Comments
13
Dec 10

Soulfish 2

Mikey over at Burl Productions is putting together what should be another classic in Soulfish 2.  Belize, BC, Egypt, Mongolia, CA… some good looking footage in there.  Check it out.


Fish Tails — No Comments
12
Dec 10

This River Is Wild.: 14 Months in the Making.

I like this blog… I like this story.  Check it out.

Lately, things have clicked for me, at least. I’ve had a few unforgettable days on the water when Zach couldn’t make it and I felt more than a little bad at rubbing in my good luck, knowing that he had yet to land a bone of his own. My success, I think, is more a case of being able to be in the right places at the right times than any major increase in skill. Although, I know my eyes are much more attuned at spotting fish than ever before.

via This River Is Wild.: 14 Months in the Making..

Gear — No Comments
09
Dec 10

Tom Bie, Saltwater Fly-Fishing Reels – The New York Times

While looking for reel reviews I ran across this piece from the New York Times featuring Tom Bie, publisher of The Drake.

Tom Bie, left, publisher of The Drake Magazine, a quarterly journal for flyfishing enthusiasts, took five saltwater reels on a three-day fishing trip through the shallow waters of Ascensión Bay, Mexico, to discover that, when casting for midsize marine life, options are good, having to perform maintenance is bad, but making sure the big one doesn’t get away is the absolutely the most essential asset of a good spool.

Check out the Tom’s thoughts on the reels he took along by going to this link: Physical Culture | Gear Test, Saltwater Fly-Fishing Reels – The New York Times.

Tom… well… he isn’t a fan of my little blog, but I’m still rooting for the Drake.  The Drake has appeal beyond normal fly fishing magazines and that can only be good as time keeps thinning the fly fishing herd.

The comments are not terribly substantive, but you wouldn’t expect the NYT to really nail this in their Fashion & Style section…

The tested reels were:

Hatch 7 Plus, Able Super (Tarpon finish), Nautilus NV, Sage 6080, Tibor Everglades

Not a bad stable to choose from.  There isn’t a bad word uttered in the very limited reviews, but you really wouldn’t expect anything to go wrong with one of these reels on a week long trip to Mexico.  That’s the limit of field testing and life… never enough time.

Gear / Tactics — 2 Comments
08
Dec 10

Bonefish Leaders, Bruce Chard and Deneki

Some great stuff from Deneki’s Bonefish School, run by Bruce Chard.

A conversation with Bruce Chard at Andros South a couple weeks back got us thinking that there’s a really a lot to saltwater leader design and construction, so we asked Bruce to sit down and talk us through how and why he makes the leaders that he uses for bonefish.

via Bonefish Leaders | Design and Construction by Bruce Chard.

Flies — No Comments
07
Dec 10

Lee Haskins ties a foam bonefishing fly… and catches fish.

I was on Blanton’s Board, looking around and I saw “Belize Report” from Lee Haskin.  Good stuff about permit and tarpon and a little about bones.  The pictures though… well… the “Shrimp Neutralizer” pattern… well… what?!?!  FOAM?!  I certainly hadn’t seen that before.  Really creative and it looks as if it caught fish.  Now that would have been handy to see before my Belize trip.

The Shrimp Neutralizer was very effective on bonefish and even had an “eat” from a big permit!

Great to use a fly that suspends and doesn’t hang up in the grass or coral!

via Trips, Flies and Fish: Belize-Rumble in the Jungle!.

Lee's bone and FOAM fly. Cool.

Lee... that's innovation. Well done.

Check out the trip report… you’ll see that Lee’s permit and tarpon were a littttttle bit bigger than mine… like… A LOT bigger.  That’s what Belize has to offer.

Gear — 14 Comments
06
Dec 10

Abel, the Super 8 and Rocketry

I have the reels I need to do the jobs I ask of them for about 95% of my angling.  Still, most of what little news emerges from the fly fishing industry is about gear… so… here’s some recent news.

Abel has revamped their workhorse bonefishing/saltwater reel, the Super 7/8 and it is now the Super 7/8N.

The Super

Now… I’ve never fished an Abel that I’m aware of.  I know there are folks that really like these reels and no doubt these cork-drag demons are tough.  I just can’t get past the price though… $700 for a Super N in a large arbor.  Compare that to the Nautilus NV ($540), the Galvan Torque ($320), Ovis’s Mirage ($425), the Opti from Loop ($560)… the only thing that is up there as company is the Tibor QC ($780 or so).

From their press release…

What do you call a fly reel that’s lighter, faster, has greater backing capacity than its predecessors and was precision engineered like something on a space mission? Answer: The Abel Super 7/8N for 2011, which essentially replaces the two longtime workhorse Super 7 and Super 8 reels.

Not only is it space-aged, but the price is astronomical as well (see the pun there?  did you see it?). I’m going to go out on a limb and say I don’t need my reels to go into space or to be designed as if they were.  Could probably knock a couple hundred off the price if they didn’t field test on the space station.

Abel is content to keep putting out products at the very, very, very top of the price range and it seems they have enough buyers to make the economics work.  Between $700 reels and $275 belt buckles (yes… belt buckles), Abel is doing nothing to support the strained relationship between Cheap and Bonefishing.

One of these won’t be holding up my jeans from Target.

Abel… your stuff is pretty.  The sticker shock is intense.

Tactics — 3 Comments
04
Dec 10

Strip Set

I was happy to see that this whole “strip set” thing is finally getting into my muscle memory.  I don’t think I botched a bonefish on a trout set on this last trip.

I got this picture of Shane in mid-hook-set… and yeah… that’ s pretty much how you do it.

Nice Strip Set

Gear — 2 Comments
03
Dec 10

The Helios – A review of sorts

When out with guide Katchu from El Pescador we had an abrupt stop on our way tarpon hunting where permit rods were demanded.  We were not rigged for permit.  I quickly got the Orvis Helios 8 wt. ready and was up on deck, casting to my first permit.

I was pumping the cast out and was carrying the line well in the air and then… then the cast fell apart.  The shot was gone. As one or two other anglers may be tempted to do, I thought, well… maybe I need to over-line this rod.  Over-lining had proved just the ticket for the Sage Xi3 7 wt., so I put on a 9 wt. line.  I missed the next shot, but have no recollection of how that cast went.

Later, in a moment of reflection, I began to wonder if, just maybe, I had jumped to conclusions about the Helios.  I mentioned out-loud to my fishing buddy Shane (who happens to be a casting instructor and a beautiful caster) that I was beginning to think that maybe I had just put out a bad cast and blamed the rod.

Shane said in watching the cast that my false cast before the final presentation had been perfect.  When he saw me go for the last cast, he knew it wasn’t going to go well.  I think I knew it down deep too.  I had botched the cast… this was operator error.

Our last morning in Belize I decided to trust Steve at Orvis and I put the 8 weight line back on the Helios and I took that rod out for the last fleeting hours of fishing.

Newsflash… the Helios casts really, really well and an 8 wt. casts an 8 wt. line very well.  It is light… that’s the first thing you notice.  It feels almost like casting a 5 wt., which may give you the impression it isn’t going to have the power to get you through the wind or the distance you might need (and I think that is why I flubbed the first cast and went through the up-line fiasco).  Of course, the ROD has the power to do it and the weight of the rod in ounces does not = the power of the rod.

I’m learning.

At $800, the Helios is in the upper, upper price range of fly fishing gear.  It really makes me want to get a Hydros out fishing… a rod that is the twin brother of the Helios… but that twin that was born 20 minutes later and who might not be totally the same.  At $500, it is much more in the price-range I’d probably be more interested in.  Basically, you get the same technology with a couple of bells and whistles removed.

If you drive a Mercedes that costs $40K, you are probably a Hydros guy.  If your Benz costs $143,000… just jump right to the Helios (even though you are probably too busy to actually fish).

Flies — 4 Comments
02
Dec 10

Here’s an interesting thought… Bonefish on a Dry Fly

I was reading a paper by Dr. Alan Friedlander (out in Hawaii, has been studying bonefish around the Pacific, has a tagging program in Hawaii) about the bonefish in Palmyra and this sentence caught my attention…

The remainder of the prey items consisted of various crustaceans (e.g., shrimp, isopods) and polychaete worms, with a few small fishes and one terrestrial beetle.

Let that thought sink in for a bit.  Bonefish.  Beetle.

The odds are not with you.  It is a one in a million shot.  Still… marinate on it for a while.

It would be cool.

Beetle Fly

Hmmm...

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