Sharkskin

I lawn casted the new SA's Sharkskin line today. It was a WF5 and boy does it cast!

The line is:
* Very limp;
* It holds no memory at all;
* The line glides through the eyes like a slippery snake;
* The high pitched noise it makes when running through the eyes is pretty annoying. I have no idea if it will wear out the eyes faster than regular lines;
* The diameter of the line feels a bit thicker than SA's regular WF5. So casting might feel different on your favorite rod;
* The fluorescent yellow color is a bit bright for my taste.


I just renewed all my lines this season, so I'll wait until it's time to get new lines. I have no idea if the line floats well as SA says and how it will handle warm weather conditions. I'm sure more stories on this new line will follow the next few months. The price is just too steep ($100!) to buy one solely as a lawn casting line.

SST

The rain jacket for the serious fly fisherman was and still is the Patagonia SST Jacket (SST stands for salmon, steelhead and trout). The original jacket was released by Patagonia in 1989 and has been for sale ever since. It has undergone several minor changes (mainly color and the jacket got a bit longer) but the main characteristics never changed: wearing comfort, functionality and sheer versatility.

I have had my jacket for many years and now. Last winter I went to fish the Goiserer and Ischler Traun in Austria and the first day was just downright wet and chilly. Never a moment did I feel cold or damp.

This jacket doesn't come cheap, but if you need a jacket for the three cooler seasons you might as well get the best. For summer use it's just too bulky & hot, unless your name is Rolf. He managed to zip up the jacket all the way to his chin during a scorching hot week in Austria. He wanted to prevent ticks crawling into his undies...

Picture of the week!

One of my photo's from my recent April trip made it 'picture of the week' on the RiverBum site!
Check it out at RiverBum.

Job: Trout bum

These guys at the Angling Exploration Group are some lucky guys. Seems like these guys don't have to take care of mortgage, 9-5 jobs and groceries to take care of. They just fly fish and travel to the best fishing destinations of the world! How's that for a life! I wish I could have done that during my college years or even just after finishing college and travel for a year.

These guys from AEG made two DVDs on their Patagonia and New Zealand trips. I got them both and these DVDs sure are mouth watering. The story line is pretty funky, much more like MTV-stylish shows rather than the fly fishing DVDs we're used to.

These guys are now in Mongolia to fish for huge taimens and monstrous brown trouts using big streamers. Keep track of their daily stories on their blog. If you want to listento their stories in Mongolia so far, check out the podcast at Zach's site.

Where are these guys going next time? Which remote destination full of huge trouts are there left? Hmm... probably Chile, the Himalayas, the moon, Kamchatka....

Wireless world

Wifi is everywhere these days and now it's also in my home. I bought the Airport Extreme with the latest and fastest IEEE 802.11n protocol. This latest implementation of the wifi technology is FAST. Typical 200+ Mbps compared to the more common 802.11g which has a 54 Mbps limit. Basically the Airport Extreme will keep up with the fastest broadband internet connection for years to come.

In the past, setting up a network meant that you had to string up the house with these clumsy UTP cables, drill holes in the floors and walls. Keeping the ugly white cables out of sight is pretty impossible too. Wireless networking using the wifi-technology makes life simply easier, more flexible and no messy cables laying around.

The nice thing about Apple's Airport solution is that you can hook up any USB printer and/or USB external harddisk to print from any spot in the house or access the external harddisk from any of the computers. It's obviously both compatible with Macs and Windows. But no Windows machine is allowed in my heck of the woods!

Anyone doing this?

Just curious:

Is anyone doing this?...