LED lights

It's past 8 PM and the hatch is really intense. The dusk is making it difficult to see the fly. Ever tried to tie a fly in the dark while fish are rising between your legs? By the way, where did I put the damn flash light?

Fishing during dusk and/or night has always been an awkward operation. I hate to fish at night because I want to see what I'm doing, be it tying a tippet or a fly. And when I'm done fishing I want to see where I'm walking. A nice twig in my nose isn't funny. So carry a flash light!? The usual flash lights are inefficient in terms of energy consumption (full lighting for just a half an hour and gradually lower light intensity), vulnerable (these bulbs always die when I need them) and just plain heavy. We fly fishermen tend to travel light, but a lightweight flash light also means small batteries and guess what? These little critters are dead faster than the you can say mother-in-law...

The recent years the so called LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology has made great improvements in lighting devices. These LEDs have come a long way since they were used in calculators and digital watches in the 1970's. Nowadays traffic lights, rear end lights of cars and acres of video displays in big cities use LEDs. In the future you'll probably see more LED applications in your home as well.

What's so great about LEDs? They are:

* extremely durable in life-span (10+ years) as well as being plain tough;
* compared to regular bulbs LEDs have extreme low energy consumption as well as energy loss through heat;
* produce very bright light;
* produce very focused light without the need of mirrored hoods.

This all means that LED lights can be very small, light and easy to operate.


Take a look at a LED light I found a couple of years ago at my local outdoors shop. This little critter is the diameter of a golf ball, since it uses button cell batteries it's as light as a pen. Since LEDs are so energy efficient, they easily keep emitting bright light for a dozen or more hours. I haven't tried them extensively for more than a dozen of times for several minutes. But on my recent trip to Canada I used them for about 3 hours non stop during a nightly fishing on the Bow river (damn mosquitos!) in the city of Calgary and they are still going strong. I do keep spare batteries in my vest.

This LED called Ear-Lite is worn on your ear, pretty much like those Bluetooth headphones for cellular phones making hands free operation a breeze. It fits comfortably on your ear, but too abrupt head movements can shake it off your ear, so you need to remember that. But since it's attached to your head, it lights up the spot you look at. The angle of the lighting can be adjusted so everything from just under your nose to several meters / yards in front of you can be lit. And I'm telling ya, this critter produces some hefty bright light!

Besides for fly fishing, this LED Lite is also quite handy for reading without disturbing anyone next to you like in the car, train or airplane. There are many other equally small LED lights available these days. From key holders to one that you can clip on the visor of your hat. For heavy duty applications (both in amount of light as well as lighting time) there are more (most head mounted) LEDs to be found at your local outdoors shops. Petzl seems to be the leading brand in head mounted LED lights.