Best of the west

On April 14, 2007 the Dutch version of the Best of the West (the guy in the picture on the right is Steve Rajeff) competition will be held in Kampen. Well, it's not the official tournament of course, just a get together organized by the Pikefly fly shop. It started as a joke after reading many statements of fly fishermen on the Dutch bulletin boards about easily casting 90+ feet. This is the means to check who is really able to cast 90+ feet or just don't have a clue about distances and measurements...

I'll be competing too, just for fun. I had my first practice this afternoon. It went okay, a bit rusty after a long winter break. We used the Sage TCR rod to practise. Man, this is one mean casting machine!

As you can see I already got the competition line: a #5 SA's Expert Distance Competition. The Expert Distance Competition is the line that is used at casting competitions and is 120 feet (36,5 m!) long (hot orange color) rather than the regular version which is 'only' 105 feet long (mist green color).

All casts will be made using a #5 weight ED Competition line. Any 9ft #5 rod can be used. Since I don't own a very fast action fly rod, I'll be borrowing a Sage TCR 590 or (I hope) the new Sage Z-Axis 590.

A bit of fly fishing history

Here is a bit of fly fishing history captured thanks to today's modern technology. Somebody uploaded a famous movie (Salar, The Leaper) on Lee Wulff fishing for atlantic salmon in the Miramichi river in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee Wulff needs no introduction. He is the most famous fly fisherman ever. He introduced us the fly vest as well as the Wulff flies, the Royal Wulff being the most famous one.

It's really amazing how Lee fishes for salmon so differently to what salmon fishing is these days with long spey rods. Here in Holland we have this saying "why do it the hard way, if it can be done easier?". Well, I have never ventured the salmon fishing area to say we are all doing the wrong way, but it sure shows that there is no method that should be seen as the only way. Isn't that why fly fishing brings us so much joy?

Here's the first part of the movie. The second part can be seen here. By the way, don't you just love the opening music?



What really caught my attention in this movie is how Lee catches salmon up to 15 lbs using a small Orvis Superfine rod. The bamboo fly rod that is and not a graphite rod. Orvis introduced graphite rods in the mid 1970's (they weren't called the Superfine series back then, just Graphite). In this movie Lee is using the 6ft ONE piece Orvis Superfine bamboo fly rod (Orvis introduced this rod in 1953). Did you know that this tiny rod weighs a mere 1 3/4 oz.?...

For Orvis geeks only, here's a (huge) list of serial numbers (incl. model name) of nearly all the bamboo fly and spinning rods made by Orvis since 1943 to 2004 (and the list is growing every day). Very interesting to see which models were introduced through the years. Warning: this is a VERY LARGE file (almost 8Mb), so it might take a while before it is loaded.

I've heard that Lee has caught even larger salmon using these small rods, just to prove his great ability to cast and catch these mighty salmon. It also shows that the weird idea of bamboo fly rods as vulnerable fishing tools is rubbish. Todays bamboo rods also use much more advanced glues to keep the six strips together. Knowing that I own a rod that shares history with Lee Wulff is kinda nice to know...


Update:
Someone figured out which rod Lee Wulff used in the movie. Lee Wulff owned Superfine #19836 (8/25/56 by Jordan & Reid), which may be the rod he's using in the film. He also owned other Orvis fly and spinning rods including #15270, #15426, #16557, #16693, #18498 and #33096.

Another history fact:
The Deluxe rods were all 2-piece lightweight models introduced in 1952 and went through at least one taper change in the following years. The 6ft one piece rod was named the Superfine. In 1967 Orvis renamed the Deluxe rods to Superfines consisting of three models: 6.5ft, 7ft and a 7.5ft fly rod

Tying bassbugs

I will be tying at a fly shop in Kampen (Netherlands) on March 24. It started as a joke about the shop having Danville tying thread but not stocking the great Danville Flymaster Plus thread as well. This thread is my choice of thread for tying bassbugs. So I told him to show how good this thread is as well as being dirt cheap compared to all these high priced gel spun and kevlar threads.

I need to tie some new bugs to get prepared for the show:

* hair mouse (always a favorite amongst women and kids)
* a couple of hair poppers
* one or two diving frogs

Update March 25:
Tying at the shop was quite enjoyable. Again, tying bassbugs in Holland of all places always raises some eye brows. Most people have hardly any experience with spinning & stacking colorful hair bugs. This makes it hard to explain which part of the tying they need to take care of to get the best results. The mouse pattern always put a smile on their face. I'll ask Hans to take a nice picture of Mighty Mouse soon.