Sage goes bass bug

Now this is an interesting move from Sage. They released a fly rod specially for fishing big and wind resistant deer hair bass bugs. There are two rods (2009: now three rods) available: one for smallmouth bass and one for largemouth bass. The last one being a more robust rod to cast those big nasty bugs. Both are a lot shorter than the rods we are used to: 7ft 11 inches. The yellowish color gives the rod a retro look resembling the older fiber glass rods.

Here is Sage's rod designer Jerry Siem showing off the new rods:


I have no idea how much easier these shorter rods will cast the big bass bugs, but I'll let you know as soon as I've cast one WITH one of my bass bugs tied to the leader. Surely other rod brands will follow this new niche market?

Hilarious PC history

While looking through YouTube this evening, I found this hilarious piece of PC history about the evergoing battle between the Mac and Windows. This three part 'instruction videos' on Mac vs Windows 95 shows how fast the computers have evolved. The features shown, while still up and running in todays operating systems, look very dated compared to today's approach.

Take a look and have a laugh!


Here is part 2 and 3.

Tango

There are probably a dozen movie clips on building bamboo fly rods on YouTube, but none so far is as fun to watch and sounds better than the one from my friend Marcelo Calviello from Argentina. This one is actually a series of still pictures but nicely zooming and panning makes the experience very alive. The gracious tango of Astor Piazolla accompanies the clip. Well done Marcelo!

Get a drink, press the play button, sit back and enjoy!

Weather blues...

Well, our trip to the Isar turned out to be a bummer... Basically we were rained out.

The heavy rain period two weeks before our trip turned the Isar into a milky blue soup. Even though the water levels dropped considerably during the week before we left, the visibility of the river was far from ideal.

The first day of the trip was pretty nice and sunny. Yet the visibility of less than 10 inches made fishing very difficult.
The second day the blue sky was exchanged for dark grey clouds. After a few hours in the morning the clouds opened their doors and the wind picked up seriously making fishing further impossible. The additional rain wiped out any hope we still had for the river to clear up.

We decided to head back home after another cloudy day. Andy who arranged the fishing for us mailed me later that once the water in the lake that feeds the Isar gets milky, it can take up to 2-3 weeks to clear up.

How frustrating to know that the following days will be quite sunny and nice!

Well, we'll definitely try this river again. Hopefully we'll have picture perfect conditions. The nice grayling I caught the first day probably tells me there is more to come.

Tying bassbugs (II)

YouTube is such a wonderful medium. I found this four part video on tying a Dahlberg Diver by a tier called Ken Bohannon. Someone filmed the tying process of Ken's Dahlberg Diver at the 2007 Texoma Tie In. Probably a fly tying show of some sort.

Although I like to tie my divers slightly different, the basic idea is the same. Ken's explanation is top notch so there is lots to learn for anyone who wants to tie a diver or improve their hair tying process. If anyone has a a question on tying the diver, hair bugs or tying with hair in general, just leave a question in the comments window and I'll get in touch with you.


Enjoy Ken's video on tying the Dahlberg Diver:



Here's part two, three and four.

Lukas' tip for Southern Germany

Lukas sent me a picture of a bead head nymph he used on his recent trip with great success. The bright maylar body seems to work well in discolored water. I will definitely tie a few of these nymphs if we do encounter discolored conditions. Thank you Lukas!

The weather in Southern Germany looks pretty bad right now. This is a snapshot from the weather widget as of now in the Munich area.

We're hoping that the weather will improve by next week and stays that way! At this moment I'm not really worried about the weather because it's still two weeks away. If it stays this way the week we leave, then I'll look a bit more worried...


Update on the weather (14 sep 2007):
It looks like the weather is improving after a rainy period. Early this week the raining stopped. The next couple of days will be even sunny and warm. The second half of next week the temperature seems to drop quite a bit.

Only concern now is the amount of water that flows through the river. At this moment the amount is dropping from a whopping 5x the average amount early this week to now about 2x. Hopefully by the beginning of next week it will be just above the average of 25-30 m3/sec.