FIELDTEST

Watch the online article on a fieldtest I did for Patagonia's new Guidewater Waders.

DECORATING FOR TROUT

Step into my portables...
The Patagonia Guidewater fly fishing vest geared up for fishing trout and grayling in mountain streams. A look at the most prominent items:
1. Tippet wallet with four different spools of tippet material. Rio fluorocarbon tippet material for nymphing and floating nylon for dry flying.
2. The ‘grey float’ is actually a nifty waste line holder for any discarded fishing line. I even use it to dispense of nylon other parties left in nature. It can hold an amazing amount of line on the inner coil.
3. Small pliers for unhooking dry flies.
4. A pouch of ‘Samadou’ on a Simms retractor. Samadou is the artificial version of the natural Amadou fungus used to quickly dry a fly. The material is a great and sustainable alternative to harvesting the natural fungus.
5. A C&F Design box of nymphs (holding over 300 nymphs).
6. An upside down bottle of line and fly floatant, kept in place within the elastic banding on the vest and retained by a Simms retractor.
7. A C&F Design box of dry flies (holding over 250 dry flies)..

Up close....
A more detailed look on the vessel’s suspension and such...
A. A Snowbee retractor holding a pair of nippers. The retractor itself clips in small opening in the cut pocket corner just below the bottom of the small curved zipper. Snowbee by the way makes one of the more versatile retractors available on the market today.
B. A Simms retractor (one of two on the vest) holding a small bottle of floatant that is retained upside down (always at the ready) in the elastic band on the vest.
C. A retracting coil that comes with the C&F Design fly boxes and clips on a stainless steel ring that hangs on a smart elastic band below the zipper of the large breast pocket (on both sides of the vest). Fly boxes are thus secured and still very easy to handle.
D. Another detailed view of that smart elastic band below the zipper of the large breast pocket holding a stainless steel ring that can be used to secure items. The stainless steel split rings do not come with the vest.
E. Another Snowbee retractor holding a pair of large and long pliers used to unhook large nymphs or nymphs that were accidentally swallowed deep in the fish its mouth.

All suspended items tuck away neatly in the many pockets the Patagonia Guidewater vest provides.
Just click on the pictures to see a larger view.

GLOBAL WATERMASTER part 1

In this series of clips we will follow Patagonia's Watermaster II around the globe. Watermaster II, the toughest waders for all styles of fishing in virtually every part of the world.

In this clip the 'Watermaster II XL Long' is fishing for silver salmon, dolly varden and arctic char in Alaska's Ongivinuk River (september 2008). We're at the junction with No Lake Creek and the fishing was outstanding.



If you too would like to add your clip of a pair of Patagonia's Watermaster II somewhere in the wet parts of this world, drop me a line and we will make it an item.

BAHAMAS BONESHRIMP

There are plenty lean and mean Bonefish shrimp patterns out there in the world of fly tying.
You have swimming shrimp, classy bitters with their epoxy body and rubber legs, mini puffs that just seem to imitate tiny critters that dwell on the surf's floor, Ruoffs Absolute Flea that has become somewhat of a legend in the Keys and McQuades Banded Shrimp, a truely lifelike looking pattern that confuses Permit and Bones alike in Mexico and Belize.

Tied them all and more, but after five neat and disciplined copies of one pattern I like to to tie something that is more or less mine and that just might work. I will get my chance to prove it come April when I will be teasing the bones on Eleuthera's shores in the Bahamas. So here is the Esox Boneshrimp. Fingers crossed and blessed be.


I once did an article on a suspending shrimp pattern tied on a circle hook. The floating shrimp would be fished on a sinking line, with a small amount of tungsten putty on the tippet. Just so that the shrimp would hover right above the ground. It proved to be a very effective way to entice fish. The circle hook will ensure the fish hooking itself once it takes of with the shrimp.


[Below] In the schedule of this particular pattern 'H' would be a piece of high boyant pinkish foam that would ensure the final shrimp pattern to float like cork. One would need to be sparse on the epoxy coating as that material, however nice the finish, will make a fly sink.
The arsenal of course has a lot more in the box than crabs and shrimps alone. Although I do mean to go into the whole 'shrimping business' with my buddy Bubba...

Common prawn - Palaemon serratus

OUTDOOR OFFICE - EARLY SPRING

An evening in my 'outdoor office' flyfishing with my buddy Bert for Bream and Ide in the great Haringvliet in the Netherlands. Bert, member of the Dutch Flyfishing Team, is a power caster. Here he is holding the better part of twenty meters of flyline in the air, ready to haul on his forward cast and shoot line.

My biggest Ide (Leuciscus idus or Winde in Dutch, Aland in German, Ide mélanote en Français) on the fly to date. A very heavy fish of 55 cm caught on a #4 flyroad and a tiny silverhead and black nymph.

After such a catch you sit yourself down and just gaze around awhile, utterly satisfied. The fish swims again unharmed.

Bert showing a smaller Ide.

Ides are of the family of Cyprinidae and live in small schools in the freshwater parts of the great Haringvliet in the Netherlands. They are predatory and feed on crustaceans, insects and small minnows. We were flyfishing for Bream and Rudd along the shores of the Haringvliet. Like Ide April and May is their time to appear in the shallows along the reeds to spawn. It is the most prolific period to flyfish for these species.

One has to make do on days when one is fishing alone. 'Faire tableau' is the French term used in hunting to display a day's 'harvest'. The fish displayed here swim again with no harm done whatsoever. An hour's catch in the late evening along the shores of the great Haringvliet in the Netherlands.

In the evening sun the golden bream (Abramis brama or Brasem in Dutch) does its name proud.

A barbless goldheaded, green fluorescent nymph (left one) caught these three.


DOWN-BRANDING ON WHISTLES AND BELLS

Patagonia’s great Guidewater fly fishing vest does not come with in-built retractors, but with attachment points designed almost in such a way that one would suspect the designer had this famous, strong and functional retractor in mind manufactured by a brand with an unspeakable name that begins with an S.


You can of course buy two of those retractors, dress down the all too obvious S-branding and still have a pair of strong retractors that seem to be an integral part of the Patagonia vest.

Patagonia’s innovations (the hits and the misses) are being discussed in detail in the Way Upstream blog. Here is a short paste on the ongoing retractor theme.

El Pescador (Patagonia’s product development director Steve Stracqualursi) said...
[...] Fly fishing product design seems to demand retractor attachment capability. Do you agree? If so, what kind of retractor do you use (pin back, post, clip)? If not, why? Regardless of your retractor opinions, what tools are mandatory and how do you attach or store your tools of the trade? [...] I think you'll all be happy with some of the new Spring 2008 product development. We have included attachment point needs and tool storage in vest, pack and bag design but in a integral way. The designs work as a whole instead of appearing like a product with whistles and bells stuck on.

Ian said...
Retractors are really a deal breaker for me. If it doesn't have a retractor built in, I've already written off the product before I give it a closer look.

[...] 
I think Simms is the only company that really has it dialed in with retractors at the moment. The retractor system on the G3 Waders, G3 Jacket, and Classic Guide Jacket tuck out of the way, take up no room, are lightweight, and are easily accessible.

I'm not particularly interested in 'attachment points', as I've yet to find an after-market zinger that I'm really happy with. Give me built in retractors, two of them at most.

ESOX LUCIUS said...
Retractors are very usefull. I use strong diving string-retractors attached to my pontoonboat to hold all necessary gear and instruments securely attached to the boat in de strong saltwater surf.
 On my vests I am more moderate. It depends on the fish I chase after. The vest that is most decorated and therefore most cumbersome in wearing is the one I use for trout fishing in mountain streams. There I have retractors for pliers, nippers, a small torch, very fine pliers, amadou pouch you name it and if it can be on a retractor I do it. I'm no heroe in the strong icy currents of a mountain stream and changing flies or tippets while balancing I find it usefull that all essential gear is secured by a retractor.

I might swear a lot when using the S-word, but I am capable of recognizing a good product when I see one. An essential product.

FLY TYING BONDAGE

THE ADDICTIVE ART OF TYING ONES OWN FLIES, NYMPHS AND STREAMERS
It all begins with a vast amount of skins, feathers, hairs, threads, shiny trinkets, beads, gold, silver and glittering fabrics and what have you. A whole sewing notions collection of 'haute couture' your average redneck homofobiac would shy away from with a shreek (high pitched).

Once you have established yourself amidst the raw materials that shine on you, have a go at one of the oldest arts and crafts surrounding the mystery of fly fishing. Beware though, fly tying is hard work and extremely addictive. Rows of volumes have been written on tying patterns and insect mimicry alone. The art goes way back.

HISTORY
In AD 200 the Roman Claudius Aelianus, in his book On the Nature of Animals, described how people fished with a fly in the river Astracus in Macedonia. In the beginning of the 13th Century a German romance written in about 1210 by Wolfram von Eschenbach mentions the catching of trout and grayling using a 'feathered hook'. The hero of the novel wades barefoot in a stream to catch trout and grayling with a fly. From 1360 onwards, across a vast area reaching from the Swiss plain to Styria, other texts identify fly fishing as the chosen method of commoners. In the early 15th Century a manuscript, kept at the Bavarian abbey of Tegernsee, lists at least fifty different fly patterns for catching carp, pike, catfish, burbot and salmon as well as trout and grayling.

Above: a few dry flies, designed to float high on the surface water while imitating local insect life. Special feathers, called 'Cul de Canard', from around the oily anal gland of certain duck species ensure extreme floatability.


Above: a closer look at a few effective nymph patterns, weighted so they will sink rapidly to where the fish are...

You have dry flies, wet flies, streamers and nymphs. The nymph imitates the larval state of an insect born out of the waters in which one fishes. The fly fishing term 'match the hatch' revers to the hatching of vast amounts of nymphs rising to the surface to evolve into the adult insect and become airborne. The hatch is a moment in time in which fish feast on both the rising nymphs as the developing adults . With equipment improvement and American fishing tackle coming to England around 1900, nymph fishing slowly began to arise. George Edward Mackenzie Skues was the nymph fishing technique's inventor and chief theoretician. Like dry-fly fishing, nymph fishing was developed in the English chalk streams. This is because such streams are fine to experiment in, with their clear water, abundant insect life, and selective fish which have become familiar with hooks due to the active flyfishing.

When fly fishing in 19th and 20th century developed even more, streamers where designed to lure great sweet- and saltwater predatory fish. Nowadays we have hundreds and hundreds of streamer patterns that will catch you billfish, dorado, tuna, bonefish, snook, jack, zander, perch and pike, to name but a few ferocious fish species.

Above a collection of effective pike streamers. Takes you hours to tie, cost you a fortune in feathers, but boy do they reek havoc among the Northern pike (Esox lucius)! Below: neat rows and rows of nymphs that do the trick: they will catch you fish almost anywhere in the world.

GORE-TEX SMOKES!

Where else than Alaska to give your gear the ultimate test? The rugged environment puts a hurting on every item you’re hauling along.

We did a floattrip on the Ongivinuk and Togiak river last September and we fly fished for salmon, grayling and trout. The weather most days was so so and that meant living in your waders for the better part of the day. The breathable waders we wore came from Simms, Hodgeman, Modulus and Patagonia.

Let me lay it down for you up front: I wore the Patagonia Watermaster II (Long), one of the few waders out there my 6’6’’ long legged stature feels comfortable in. And this one didn’t end on the fire. The Hodgeman did as it started leaking along seam after seam. The Modulus did within two days with multiple pinpoint leakage problems. The Simms did the year before, and I’m talking about the Simms G3 Guide Stockingfoot wader. It leaked heavily along the...stockingfoot.
Now I know full well that one buys a wader just to have it leak on you sooner or later. My Watermaster II however is still in prime condition after two seasons of rather heavy duty. All of my Patagonian stuff, from performance baselayers, to sweaters, to rain jacket, to duffel: they held remarkably well under Alaskan circumstances. I have definitely become a full blown Patagonia fan.

Now for the rods... We broke three # eight rods on Silvers that didn’t choose to jump but went straight for Dillingham and the open sea in one scorching run. I broke my Gatti three piece, a fine example of Italian rod builders craftsmanship but a tad on the fine side for those silver bullets in the Togiak River. So faired a new Sage TCX and a Dutch custom built eight rod that goes under the name of: ‘a fucking good rod’. My Redington Red.Fly and a Snowbee outperformed the brands with the big names altogether. ‘Dutch reels’ where used predominantly (what else?) along with a few System Two’s and the Dutch beauties did exactly what was needed of them. Simply fantastic reels, the whole series. I will spare you the details of all the knots that weren’t up to the power bursts of silvers and big rainbows, suffice it to say that in the end only true blood knots were used. Blood knots on strong tapered nylon leaders and 24 lb test fluorocarbon tippets. Stay tuned, I might be back shortly with more detailed info on our Alaskan adventure.

Power packed fresh silvers on the Togiak river in Alaska.