On-line FF magazines

The internet being a much faster media than regular paper is giving fly fishing magazines a hard time. Some guys are using the internet to their advantage: why not an on-line magazine?

The on-line magazine This is Fly is the first of this new generation of fly fishing magazines only available through the internet. It's not your average on-line version of the magazines we know. It's pretty much the 'grunge' version with short articles with lots of graphically altered images, fast-and-furious action and weird fish caught in weird places. Kinda like fly fishing magazine meets MTV Jackass. Not really everyones cup of tea probably.

The brand new on-line magazine Catch Magazine is the next adventure by the famous professional photographer and fly fishing adventurer Brian O’Keefe. Catch is a visual extravaganza in terms of amazing photography, embedded video clips and mouthwatering destinations. You might call it a Brian O’Keefe commercial?... (grin)

Well anyway, take a look and make your choice.

Patagonia - Yvon Chouinard

Patagonia needs no introduction. It's basically the manufacturer of the finest outdoor clothing and fly fishing apparel. The man behind the brand is less known. Founder and owner Yvon Chouinard is also very much a pioneer in environmental conservation as well as one of the best rock climbers during his active years.

I've only seen pictures of Yvon Chouinard in silhouette in some advertisements of Patagonia in various fly fishing magazines. It's very inspiring to watch and listen to him in this little video. I really like the analogy he makes in the video: "...fly fishing, you have to read the river like a rock climber reads a rock...".

Another one:
"...fly fishing is not about catching fish... it's about adapting yourself to where you're worthy of catching a fish..."

No comment (II)

The previous edition of No Comment is here.

Some folks say fishing bamboo fly rods can be really addictive. Well, I have no plans to end up with such a collection of rods as the picture shows. But I can agree that bamboo rods are really fun to fish and cast. In fact, I've lost nearly all interest in graphite rods since I've been fishing with bamboo fly rods.

Well, probably a next edition of No Comment in the future.

Pretty small reels

I just ran into a bunch of new spare spools for the Hardy Flyweight and one for the Featherweight. The Hardy Lightweight reel series have been around for more than 50 years. I prefer the Orvis CFO reels as my lightweight reels but some prefer the Hardy reels. I've owned a nice Featherweight reel once. Not sure what ever happened to it. I think I sold it to a member of our fly fishing club.

I bought these spare spools since I knew somebody was looking for them. Well, I hope he will have fun with these spools. They look great on small midge bamboo fly rods.

Write your own font!

Ever wanted to make your own font but you don't have the skills to design them?
Here is Fontifier.


It's an amazingly simple concept:

1) Print out a template.
2) Write down the alphabet using your own handwriting on the sheet.
3) Scan the template.
4) Upload the file and preview the result.
5) If you like the result, download the converted font.
6) Use the font after copying the file into the Fonts-folder.

Every font you decide to use will cost you only $9.

Now, what a stupidly simple way to make your own unique font! That's why I just love Apple's philosophy.

The prince and his hopper

Back from my trip to the German Traun. The trip turned out to be different than anticipated. Both my buddies (Rolf & Andreas) couldn't make it, due to various reasons. Well, that's a bummer in terms of nice company and catching up with some good fishing, good laughs, fine food treatings and plain enjoying the nice surroundings. Weather was just as expected: sunny and HOT!

The river was in fine shape: clear and low. Chest waders were definitely too hot for this condition. Good thing I also brought my breathable hippers. I also decided to try something different this time. Usually I fish with weighted nymphs. This trip I have been using a hopper-dropper combination all four days, just like on my trip to Montana in 2005.

The hopper is the Alien Bug and the dropper is a sparsely tied bead head Prince. The many riffles, under overhanging branches as well as the edges around the undercut banks were just the spots to cast this duo. Yet, it's still amazing how a fish of around 16-18 inches still manages to keep unnoticed in a spot with barely 10 inches of water. This fellow hit the Prince nymph the moment I tossed it into a slightly deeper (we are talking about 10-12 inches of water here) channel of a fast riffle I walked by. Before I knew it he made a nasty run and came tail walking out of the water. Nice...

The predominantly browns just loved this enticing offering! Just seeing the hopper dive under made it even more exciting than the usual strike indicator jumping upstream. On several stretches the rig proved to be deadly. I wished my buddies were able to experience the superb fishing I had these couple of days. It's also interesting to see that some browns only had dark spots while others also had wonderful red spots. Looks like there are two (or maybe more) different strains of browns in the river.

Every once in a while a brave fish would grab the hopper. Most of them were missed simply because the hopper being just too big for them. I even caught several nice graylings, including a fat 18 inch fish. It's a darn nice sight to see a grayling come up and follow the offerings and eventually grabbing the nymph. Not to mention that these big graylings are tough fighters.

The fine Italian food of the local ristorante was nothing short of amazing after an enticing day of fishing.

I'll end with some various pictures of the trip. The wonderful painting was found at the hostel lobby where I was staying. While I tried to grab this view of a typical village at the valley of the fore Alp region of Southern Germany this nun greeted me on her bicycle! You can see her riding away. Would you think that was Maria?...

2nd trip of 2008 coming up!

My second fishing trip of 2008 is due next week. I'll be fishing a new stretch of the Deutsche Traun. I get to meet up with my old friend Andreas in Southern Germany.

Hope to see ideal conditions. The previous weeks has been pretty unstable weather. This week the skies are clearing up as well as the temperature heading towards the 25-30 degrees Celsius. I love fishing under a sunny sky! Yup, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do...

Spring fishing 2008

What can I say? After a period without fishing, you start to wonder if you're still into the game. Well, as soon as I saw the gin clear streams near the Austrian border it started to itch again... What will this spring bring us?

After the weird conditions of last year, I was hoping for conditions without extremities. We were blessed with excellent weather conditions. Just the weather I like for my fishing: sunny and warm.

The river conditions were close to normal. I did notice some changes in the structure of the river. Seems like the river endured some heavy rain causing strong enough current to change the structures on the bottom as well as the edges of the river.

For me our highlight of the trip was a days outing to the German Traun. The river is such an example of a prime trout water: gin clear water, strong fish and solitude. I need to capture this moment...

My buddies were especially impressed by the strength of the fish in this river. I really enjoyed the long runs the fish takes. Simply addicting!

Enjoy the pictures!

Fishing trip & Fly Fair 2008

The fishing trip I took last week was great. Great company, superb weather and slightly less than usual fishing. But nonetheless a memorable trip still. I'm waiting for the pictures from my friend Cees, so keep posted for the pictures as well as a more elaborate fishing report.

This weekend was the 2008 edition of the Fly Fair. Different location, old style fair with lots of tying as well as casting and shops showing their goods. It wasn't as extensively visited as the previous ones, which are by the way at least 5 years back. Not the fair with the big names like Charles Jardin, Dave Whitlock etc. Much more of the small cosy fair where people with the same game in mind come together.

Cane building @ Thomas and Thomas

Discovery Channel ran an episode from their 'How it is made' series on building cane rods at Thomas and Thomas. For who missed the show on TV, here it is. We see Tom Dorsey working on a rod. I always wondered how they made the distinctive tiger striping (flamed) on their rods. Well, pretty simple as you can see in the clip.



What surprised me in this clip is how efficient the whole process of rod making looks. Pretty much like a manufacturing plant. It's not the small garage type, work bench full of bamboo curls, cork dust and used tools I've seen often with individual bamboo makers. It also demystifies a bit the Thomas and Thomas bamboo rods have...

Getting ready for the new season

Spring is finally in the air. At our local fly fishing club the members are getting ready for the new season. My first trip of this season is a good week away. I can't wait to wet my first line this year!

I hope the weather will keep its course this year. We've had more bad conditions last year than I can remember.

Higher quality YouTube movies

I was complaining about the low resolution of movies when watching fly fishing and fly tying clips on YouTube. With the standard low quality you can't see the strike, the details of the fly or even whether it's a rainbow or a brown trout!

Now, I found out that you can change the resolution simply by changing the settings in YouTube itself! Change the video quality to high quality in your Accounts menu. If the clip is uploaded in high quality, you'll be able to view it in a higher quality as well. Obviously you'll need a broadband internet connection to enjoy the high quality video.


Now we're at it:
With TubeTV you can download YouTube clips, convert and save them into your wanted codec, including the high quality H.264 codec. Sorry guys, this TubeTV is a Mac-only application.


About my next trip:
It's planned for the week of 12 May 2008.

Marcelo's Patagonia trip

Our friend Marcelo Calviello just returned from an amazing fishing trip in Patagonia. Just the sound of it makes most fishermen mouth-water... Take a look at the picture on the left. It's just fly fishing heaven!

Patagonia must be, next to New Zealand, the most intriguing destination for the trout fisherman. For me it's one of the two destinations I'll have to visit one day. Not to forget the fascinating history of Buenos Aires as well as the world famous Argentinean beef!

Click on Marcelo's blog on the list of links on the left or just here to read and enjoy the fabulous pictures of the trip. I'm sure you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Hmm... one day...

Orvis

What was your first high end rod? Mine was Orvis. Orvis is one of the oldest fly rod manufacturers in the world. Founded by Charles F. Orvis in 1856, the company grew from a rod manufacturer to a full service mail order company.

I bought the Tippet and later the Western Tippet (which I regrettably sold). Orvis was when I started fly fishing the only high end US brand known here. I remember drooling over the Orvis ads in the fishing magazines. I just loved how the Superfine grip on their rods looked.

The Tippet (7.5ft, #3) is still my favorite rod to fish small to medium size streams

Thanks to Zach Mathews for letting me use the picture he shot during his visit to Orvis.

Web page grabber

While you're at the TastyApps site, check out this amazing application called WebSnapper.

I've seen web page saving applications (saves web pages as PDF) before but I've never seen one that also preserves the links in the PDF document. So, if you click on a link in the PDF document, your browser will open the URL! 

To make life easier, WebSnapper can also add a button on the Safari browser (it's the button right to the printer button) for instant access to save a web page.

I just bought it right away. At only $8 it's a steal! (Same as VideoBox)

Jobs vs Gates

Not a very common sight: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together in an interview.
These gentlemen have been in the computer arena since the start of the personal computer. They both run a very successful company. In spite of the domination of Windows, Apple and Jobs are considered THE innovative company and mind in the industry.

This is a really interesting interview. In this interview you get to hear how the most influential parts of the computer history was written from the men themselves! They even give you a peek to the future developments.



The video above is a high light of a long (1.5 hour!) interview between the two captains of industry. If you want to watch the whole interview, check it out here.

Almost here

It's pretty impossible to film a video and fish at the same time. Unless you have someone walking next to you. Yet my guess is that the ideal fly fishing video camera is almost here. With the camcorders getting smaller and smaller thanks to the high capacity memory cards, it's just a matter of time that camcorders are the size of a cellular phone. In fact, maybe the next revolution in video recording will come from a phone company.

The camcorder I'm waiting for is one that has a small lens on a wire to the main device. The lens on a wire should be small enough to be attached to the visor of a cap. Together with a decent wide angle lens, a large capacity SD memory card and you got an amazing camcorder which records every thing you see! Kinda neat huh?

It isn't here yet, but there are a few developments that comes close. Here is an idea on development for a device which connects to a cellular phone to 'film what you see'. Here's a (video)camera that can be attached to a helmet. I've never seen a fly fisherman wearing a helmet. But if we do see one, he might be a pioneering with the first ever first person fly fishing movie!

In the mean time, the Canon Powershot TX1 might be an interesting alternative to the fly fisher's camcorder. This hybrid camera/camcorder is really tiny!


Update 28 dec 2007:
This is the Samsung SC-X300L. This nifty little camcorder (also) has an external lens that can be clipped to your cap to shoot hands free. This camcorder is probably the closest thing that comes to my idea. The price tag is around $350.

According to some reviews the image quality from the external lens is very much a fish-eye view and a much lower resolution than the main lens. It's a very nifty little gadget still. Unfortunately this device doesn't have a Mac driver yet...

Classic Mac TV ads

It's pretty funny that some 20 years ago we used to use personal computers by typing in commands like DIR and MD FOLDER for simple tasks we today do it by a click with the mouse. Here are some classic TV ads Apple made for their new Macintosh in 1984.

Don't forget to notice how many applications basically haven't changed since. For instance: did you know that Microsoft Word and Excel were originally Mac-only applications? These professional business applications were the Mac alternatives against PC (Dos) applications WordPerfect and Lotus 123.



Here's a great little application called VideoBox to capture & save Flash movies (like YouTube movies) into Quicktime MOV files. Sorry, Mac only!

Goiserer traun Dec 2007 - Mixed bag

The recent trip to the Goiserer Traun turned out to be a mixed bag. Basically it was a get together with my friend John, enjoying the amazing (winter) scenery and mediocre river conditions.

We decided to give it a try to head down to the Austrian Salzkammergut region since I had a pretty nice trip last winter. We had our hopes to catch some nice big graylings and we had some catching up to do.

Days before our departure the forecast looked pretty unstable: rain and probably snow in the higher elevations. We arrived at our destination and it was covered with about 10 inches of snow. The snowy condition stayed until the second day. Although we both had excellent protection from our gear, I prefer a more warmer weather for my fishing.

The fishing was mediocre at best. The river was higher than last winter and the fish were there but not the amount and size we hoped for. The first day turned out to be the best day. We also tried the Ischler Traun the second day for a couple of hours. I lost a nice rainbow during a long run while John caught two nice fish near the shore.

We decided to head home on the third day due to fishing conditions getting 'worse': clearing skies and warm temperatures... The warmer temperatures caused snow to melt causing higher water levels as well getting murky. The rain during the previous night didn't help either.

Well, not the epic trip as we hoped for yet a very enjoyable trip still.
Next time, we'll try fishing in shorts!

Reminiscing - part III

My first visit to the Rocky Mountains region in 1992, I ran into some very memorable moments. That year I saw the majestic scenery of the park for the first time as we entered the park through the north eastern entrance.

In the little town of West Yellowstone, my buddy Don and I awaited for Scott to arrive in his camper he bought from his (then) boss. It was an old beast, pretty much resembling a lunch box on wheels. But we had the best camping experience in the park! The fishing in the park has never been as good as during my first visit.

I also met Craig Mathews, the owner of Blue Ribbon Flies. I wasn't aware that he was a fly fishing celebrity then. Like any fly shop in the Rockies, this shop was like heaven on earth. Every imaginable brand, equipment and the ambiance was just amazing!

What made an everlasting impression was that he agreed to trade in my 2 piece rod (Sage 690LL) I bought back home specially for this trip for a brand new 4 piece rod, which was quite a novelty back then. The 4 piece Sage 490 LL I traded was an eye opener for me! The lighter weight of the rod was such a joy to cast all day. The multi piece rod that casts like a 2 piece rod was also totally new to me.

2007 & weather

It's early November and it's hard to imagine how a nice and sunny day feels like. Talking about the weather! 2007 is surely one of the most unstable year when the weather is concerned. We had a hot spring, cool summer and basically a wet year. Friends who took a trip to New Zealand during October were treated with lots of rain and windy conditions. Not exactly what you are looking for when you decide to take the wet dream destination of fly fishermen...

Was 2007 a normal year at your heck of the woods or are the weather hick ups we saw in Europe part of a global proces?

2007 is almost coming to an end. Well not quite maybe. I just might treat myself with a short trip to the Austrian river which is still open this late. Not sure how the weather will hold up.

Keep posted for the trip report. Here is the trip report of last winter.

Apple's iPhone - part II

The iPhone has been released in the UK and Germany today. No sign of it being released in The Netherlands yet... Folks are buying these iPhone from the US and hacking them to work on their local providers. I'll just wait and see when it officially arrives here.

Again, I haven't seen one in real life yet but I have been watching the reactions about the device from a distance. I'm sure Apple has made a fine mobile phone, but it can't be THAT good?...

Well, after watching this guy's comment on the iPhone, I'm really starting to think that the iPhone IS really setting a whole new level of mobile experience. This Chris Pirillo is supposed to be the uber-geek of the computer world. I've never heard about this guy before but I understand that things he says are respected by many.

Check out this guy's thought on the iPhone: