I flipped open to an article called “Eden’s Tarpon” and couldn’t put the mag down after that. I read almost the whole thing just standing there. It has great photography, interesting writing, no top ten lists, no “look at me Ma, I’m fly fishing” articles, and even a solid Head reference.

I was going to shelve it but then decided these guys need to get paid so they can keep doing it. $15. And thanks for the bluefish love.

The Redington Predator and Temple Fork TiCrx short sixes.

A man serious about the prospecting of ditches needs a shorty. As discovered researching  ”A Brief History of Ditch Fishing” a 7’6″ snub-nosed can be a deadly weapon at close range. My dad’s old Horrocks-Ibbotson is to me a ranking northeast small stream trout rod (bought in his time for $12). But for my ditch forays I wanted a 6w with extra mustard.

I tried two less expensive commercial rods under eight feet: the Redington Predator and the Temple Fork TiCrx 6w. I’ve fished both of them in close quarters north and south since April, and used an anonymous 9′ 6w as the field test control. Here are my thoughts:

REDINGTON PREDATOR 71064: 7’10″ six weight. The Redington Predator has backbone. It’s 4 inches longer and a half ounce lighter than the TiCrx, but it proved the stiffer rod for double hauling big clumsy flies in wind. The Predator allowed for better line control than the nine footer. It handled 150 grain sink line better than the TiCrx and would be more suited to light saltwater duty. Great for throwing big poppers and oversized streamers normally reserved for 8 or 9w duty. Not as great for soft presentations. $199, www.redington.com

TEMPLE FORK TICRX 0676 4 TX 7’6″ six weight. Once you calibrate loading the rod on back cast, the TiCrx shorty allows for accurate casts and tight loops. I could put shots under bridges and into bank overgrowth far better than with the nine footer and with greater accuracy than the Predator. It has more feel than the Predator but I didn’t like how it responded with the 150 grain sink. $250, www.templeforkflyrods.com

VERDICT: I like the Predator for big bugs, sinking line, and light salt, and the TiCrx for spots with no backcast room and tight fits. I may try to make my own ditch rod from a blank and either way if I’m walking a dirty canal I’m never bringing my neener again.

My buddy Ovi saw a guy from Atlantic Outfitters tying saltwater patterns at a Fishing Expo and curing the heads with a UV light. Ovi told me about it.

All my flies have brown heads. This acrylic head gunk supposedly cures clear. I found a thread from 2006 started by Bob Popovics on Stripers Online, where the master tyer said this:

As far as the cost goes, it probably is more expensive than epoxy but not that much. There is no waste since no mixing is involved. No excess on the mixing paper after the fly has been made. I apply the stuff directly from the syringe onto the fly, when I am satisfied with the shape and coverage, I light it up and in about 8 seconds it’s hardened. No obnoxious smell, no cleaning of my bodkin, no papers etc. The cost comes back positively many times after you use it. The light is the big investment but I could buy ten or more lights if I got rid of so many junk items that I bought in the past. What about an epoxy turner? Don’t need them anymore. How much did they cost? Give it a try first. That is all I suggest.
One of the coolest things about this stuff is seeing it get CLEARER in the sun! When first applied, the stuff has an amber tinge to it. A couple of hours in the sun and its CYRSTAL CLEAR! FOREVER! Great stuff.
BobPop”

Endorsement enough for a hack tyer like me. I made my way to Atlantic and came away with a tube of Loon UV Knot Sense and a blue light. I haven’t tried the flies in the water yet but, man, is it easier to set the head shape. And I didn’t feel like some crazy glue sniffer at the end of the night.

The Hamilton Eat-Me is my favorite fly. The Florida guide Scott Hamilton introduced me to his pattern 10 years ago on a trip where we used the same fly to catch baby tarpon, dolphin (mahi), and false albacore. He gave me one and the next day I used it freshwater fishing and caught largemouth and peacock bass.

Since then I’ve caught 21 different salt and freshwater species with an eat-me. Hamilton says the species count is well over 100. (Like Alex said today on 40 Rivers, a good streamer/baitfish pattern will work for just about anything.)

It’s a simple, durable, deadly baitfish pattern. I like simple. I like durable. Deadly, too.

When I started epoxying my fingers together tying a few years ago, I followed suit and made variations in different sizes and color schemes.

Hook: whatever size you need,  saltwater nasty.

Hair: Super hair; white with variations of green, chartreuse, brown, black, yellow, blue…whatever.

Thread: mono

Head: big ass eyes encased in epoxy.

A lot has already been said about this title, so I’ll just add this: The Alaska Chronicles is the best fly fishing book I’ve read in a long time.

Miles Nolte’s efficiency of prose is top notch. He has a good story to tell and doesn’t let useless words, thoughts, exclamatory hyperbole, or cliche bog it down. The result is a book that’s hard to set aside, one of those reads that make chunks of time–like the morning train commute or the fly time between take-off and touchdown–disappear.

If you don’t know the story, Nolte spent two-plus  seasons guiding at a remote lodge in Alaska, and documented his second on The Drake message board. His daily journal provided a gateway into the guiding life and all that comes with it. Props to Departure Publishing for transcribing it into book form.

Every punk-ass guide wannabe should read this book. Every civilian fly fisherman with midlife-crisis dreams of getting away from it all should read this book. If the closest you’ll ever come to fishing in Alaska is via the pages of a book, this is an excellent choice to get there.

Score one for participatory journalism.

In 2007 David Kinney, a career newspaperman, dove headfirst into the collective insanity that is the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. The result is The Big One, an exhaustively researched window into the people and culture that fuel the derby, and the mania that fuels them.

It would be tempting to think this was an easy book to write; go fishing and then type it all out. That would be incorrect. Kinney deserves credit for gaining access to a group so paranoid and insular that getting any of them to talk and take him fishing is remarkable. (In fact, reading some passages, you’re left to wonder if the source is on the level or passing along blatant misinformation.)

Kinney weaves the narrative around a local angler named Lev Wlodyka, who during the tournament catches the fish of a lifetime and sparks a flurry of controversy that still reverbates in striper cirlces today. (Yo-yoing for stripers is a divisive fishing technique.) But Kinney fishes with just about everybody in the tournament; from shore, by boat, at night, at sunrise, on the jetty, in public spots and secret spots, with blue collar wharf rats and charter hiring blue bloods. He documents what the tourney means to them against the backdrop of evolving Vineyard life.

The book is not for everyone. Some may be turned off by what competitive fishing does to people. Others will blanch at the glorification of an all-kill tournament, a practice even a lot of hardcore anglers find outdated. If you’re comfortable with either notion, and have delved into northeast salt, you will enjoy this read.

Even if you’ve never been to the Vineyard or fished for striped bass, bluefish, albies, or bonito, there is one central theme you can take away from this book. And that is that the best fishermen are insane.

“I want ‘em to look in the eye of that fish.”

The moment the first spey cast jumps from the screen in high definition, and the fly line falls over the currents of the Deschutes River, the viewer is hooked. The film’s vibrancy strikes an immediate chord, and it’s easy to settle in thinking Drift will progress as a collection of high quality destination pieces. Not exactly.

The new fly fishing film from Confluence Films takes the viewer to intriguing places, sure, but Drift isn’t really about where to fish, it’s about people and why they fish. The destinations provide the backdrop.

Drift is comprised of five segments that have the feel of magazine profiles brought to life. In Oregon, it focuses on John and Amy Hazel of the Deschutes Angler as they cast for steelhead. When John Hazel says the above highlighted quote  in discussing what he hopes his clients take from every fish, you get that this is more about his passion than it is about the Deschutes or the steelhead. The same holds true as Drift follows Brian O’Keefe down to Turneffe Flats in Belize and then Punta Gorda with the Garbutt Brothers. (Plus, you get a sense of how hard permit fishing is when one of the brothers spots one and says to O’Keefe, “Only 80 feet, moving left.”)

The people do not come through as strongly in the third segment about winter tailwaters, probably because it packs in three locales–the Green, The Frying Pan, and the Bighorn–but you still get a good overall feel for the why of winter fishing. 

Drift hits it perfectly in its profile of Charlie Smith, the Andros Island bonefish legend who invented the Crazy Charlie. It is the strongest piece in the film; it would have been had it not featured a single bonefish and just shown Smith picking the banjo.

Drift closes in Kashmir, where it follows two anglers (Jon Steihl and Travis Smith) who find that the trout fishing is the same but, “The minute you got out of the water…everywhere there were signs you weren’t at home anymore.” 

Find interesting people in interesting places and tell the stories through strong cinematography and narrative, and you get Drift, a fly fishing film that hits its mark.

(Here’s the trailer on Youtube.)

Having spent many summers on a river where catching a muskellunge is an achievement that gets noted in the local paper, and having witnessed exactly one person hook one on the fly, I’ve looked forward to reading  Muskie on the Fly, by Robert Tomes, as much as any other fly fishing instructional book. As someone who ranks the muskie high on his fly fishing wish list, I am not disappointed.

Muskie on the Fly falls in line with other books from Wild River Press, such as Fly Fishing for Striped Bass, in that it is obsessive, compulsive, and encyclopedic in its depth of coverage. And that it is packaged as an expensive glossy hardcover. As with the striper book, if someone buys this with the intent of leaving it on a coffee table, they are missing out. Reading this book will shorten your dues-paying casts from 10,000 down to about 8,000. (What, you were expecting instant gratification?)

A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear Tomes give a talk on muskie at a local fly fishing show, and he delivered an informative presentation along with a powerpoint slide show of adrenaline-spiking muskie pics. His was the only presentation where I actually learned something. Consider this book the expanded, way more in-depth version of that.

For a quick sample of Muskie on the Fly, check out this excerpt on Midcurrent.

Tommy likey, Tommy want wingy

In many places the great river of grass that flows south from Okeechobee through the Everglades and out to Florida Bay is, depending on time and tide, ankle deep. But it is still navigable. The Seminoles and later the cracker Gladesmen criss-crossed the skinny-water labyrinth by poling in long narrow dugout skiffs. It is these historical canoes that Ron Hyde used for inspiration in designing his new Seminole Flats skiff.

I spent time last week running the Glades with Hyde in a Seminole, and it is unlike any other modern flats skiff.  The one-time owner of the Goodnews River Lodge in Alaska, Hyde has also fished the back country in the Everglades and Biscayne Bay longer than I’ve been alive. He likes to get to the fish in the shallowest of water, so Hyde set out to design a skiff to his own specs. Since I’m reviewing it in an article for my actual job, I won’t get into much detail, but here are some photos from our exploration.

Cool boat for one of the coolest areas in the country to explore.

(For more info, you can email Ron Hyde: captron3ATbellsouth.net)