Articles

With Vedavoo, it's the little things

by Chad Shmukler - Wednesday, Feb 4th, 2015

The Vedavoo Tight Lines 'Beast' sling pack.

Sometimes, creating a great product is all about the big things; coming up with an entirely new concept, innovating the use of radically new materials, engineering superior mechanics and so on. More often, though, it seems to come down to the little things. Whether that involves scrutinizing materials, the finer points of form and function, refining existing designs or listening to and incorporating customer feedback; companies whose design and manufacturing philosophy revolve around honing even the most minute details often build the best products.

Spend even a few minutes talking with Vedavoo founder Scott Hunter -- as he describes pattern making and stitching refinements and improvements that many of Vedavoo's most popular slings and packs have seen over their life cycle, waxes lyrical about fabrics and their sources, or talks excitedly about discoveries they've made about their own designs over the years -- and it becomes abundantly clear just how important the little things are at Vedavoo. And the thing about all those little things, is that they quickly add up to become big things.

RIO Releases New GT Fly Line

by Ben Kryzinski - Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2015

Photo: Dr. Dwayne Meadows.

If you've ever fished for Giant trevally, you know that it introduces its own unique set of challenges. The biggest of the jack family (Carangidae), GT are ferocious predators. Due to their aggressive nature, GT are considered less difficult to hook than many other tropical saltwater species that are often targeted on the fly. The challenges when fishing for GT comes in the form of casting big, heavy rods and large flies and, once they've been hooked, holding on and hoping your gear holds on long enough to land them.

Continuing its expansion of its specialty fly lines, RIO has released a new line specifically targeted at GT fishermen. According to RIO, its new GT line is "built on an ultra strong core and is designed with a short, heavy head to carry big flies on powerful fly rods. The powerful front taper casts very large flies with ease, but the biggest benefit of this line is the core strength. The extremely tough core has a breaking strength in excess of 50 pounds to easily battle large fish and to resist cuts from coral and rock structures."

Review: Flycraft Stealth fishing craft

A greenhorn no more

by Chad Shmukler - Monday, Feb 2nd, 2015

When you spend a lot of time in fly fishing circles, being a greenhorn on the oars makes you a bit of a pariah. Or, at least, it makes you feel like one. Amongst avid anglers or industry folk, there exists an assumption that you know what you’re doing around boats. Oars, ropes, anchors and so on and what to do with them is treated as instinctive knowledge, leaving those that lack it on the outside.

Count me amongst the drift boat hayseeds. It’s not that I’m perplexed by boats, I just didn’t grow up around them. Sure, I’ve rowed john boats on bass ponds, paddled canoes and kayaked a bit, but none of that does anything to prepare you for handling a 4-500 lb. drift boat in heavy current.

Here in East, where drift boats don’t dot every driveway, this less of an offense. Even in trouty Pennsylvania, the closest driftable trout river to me is ninety minutes away, and the next one after that is another ninety. Given that the vast majority of our trout fishing is done on foot, lacking the capacity to handle a boat hasn’t meant missing all that much water.

Fly Fishing Film Tour Kicks Off

by Ben Kryzinski - Wednesday, Jan 28th, 2015

The annual Fly Fishing Film Tour (F3T) kicked off earlier this week in Denver, Colorado. The tour has since moved on to Montana, with a showing last night at Bozeman's Emerson Theater and continues this week with screenings in Billings, Helena and Missoula. 160 cities later, the tour will conclude on April 30th in Austin, Texas.

This year's F3T selections includes films like Co2ld Waters, which stars Craig Matthews and Yvon Chouinard, amongst others and takes a look at the single biggest threat facing the future of angling: climate change. 90 Miles, which tells the story of Cuba's bonefish, tarpon and permit fishery -- a topic hot on the minds of many anglers these days -- seen through the eyes of a Bonefish Tarpon and Trust scientific outreach mission in 2013.

Trashing Sportsmen: Influence Spurs Smear Campaign

by Ty Hansen - Tuesday, Jan 27th, 2015

Colorado's Roan Plateau, the site of a collaborative agreement between conservation groups, including TU, and the oil and gas industry. The Bill Barrett Co.--the natural gas lease holder on the Roan--is donating $500,000 to TU and its conservation partners over the next several years for cutthroat trout recovery efforts on the plateau.

It would appear that the energy and extraction industries are getting tired of the burgeoning influence sportsmen and women are wielding these days in the conservation arena, and they’re spending some money on a clandestine effort to besmirch a handful of nonprofit organizations that help give anglers and hunters a voice in today’s pivotal conservation debate.

And it’s pretty sleazy, honestly.

Since last spring, a slew of letters to the editor to dozens of small to mid-sized daily newspapers around the country has appeared from a single author -- one Will Coggin -- describing some of the most influential sportsmen’s conservation groups as left-wing fronts that take money from anti-industry foundations and use that money to stifle everything from natural gas fracking to hard-rock mining.