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Gear Review: HMH’s Tube Fly Tool
Posted on November 21st, 2009 No comments
I haven't named this one yet, but I was stoked to finally tie something I've had pictured in my head for forever now
Well I finally got a chance to play with a couple new toys yesterday. Singlebarbed’s 6th Finger Scissor , and HMH’s Starter Tube Fly Tool .
To tie tubes in the past, I’ve either used an allen wrench, or just put the tube directly in my vise’s jaws. The allen wrench works okay, but I’ve never been able to spin/stack deer hair without the wrench slipping a little in the jaws from all the torque on the tube. Putting the tube right in my vise’s jaws worked alright, too, but I ran into the same problem when spinning hair, and would sometimes crush plastic tubes.
I ordered the HMH Tube Fly Tool from J Stockard Fly Fishing . They aren’t one of my sponsors or anything, I just like doing business with them. Plus, for my recent birthday, I got a $50 gift certificate to use there from my mother-in-law.
Like all poor bastards savvy shoppers, I spent a good deal of time going through the tying materials on the J Stockard site, trying to figure out a way to squeeze everything I’ve been meaning to add to my materials arsenal onto that $50 credit. The list of stuff that I first filled my shopping cart with looked drastically different than my final order. My first instinct was to get as many hooks as I could. Then I remembered that I have been wanting to play with rattles on my carp flies, and Stalcup’s Damsel Body on my panfish flies. Then I added a bunch of synthetic hair before I ran into the HMH tube fly coneheads and remembered that this is the tying season that I go to tubes for all my streamer patterns instead of regular hooks. And before you knew it, I was removing just enough stuff that I could add the Tube Fly Tool pictured above to my cart without going over my $50 limit.
Now before I give a glowing review on this product, I’ve got to admit that after a past experience with HMH while I was writing the DayTripper blog, I really didn’t want to. I won’t go into details or anything, but I only point it out because I had sworn to myself that I’d never give a positive review for another HMH product again after what happened behind the scenes.
Yet here I am, about to tell you that the HMH Tube Fly Tool is rock solid in my vise- a Danvise by the way, so [tongue in cheek] I would guess that all of you who tie on a Renzetti/ Dynaking/ HMH/ etc., should have no problems with this tool [/tongue in cheek] .
After tying a few typical tube patterns like the one pictured waaay up at the top of this post, and being happy with the tool’s holding power, I decided it was time to pull the deer hair out.
I went through my mental rolodex of patterns I’ve been wanting to convert to a tube, and sitting way up on top was the Crayfish Muddler, a crayfish pattern developed by Hatches Magazine Editor, Will Mullis.
As I put more and more force on the thread, the hair spun, and the tool stayed put in my vise’s jaws. But more importantly, the metal rod that holds the tube didn’t bend, the tube didn’t spin, and I was happy enough with the results that I broke my blood oath to never endorse another HMH product again.
So, if you want to enter the world of tubes, I’d say this tool is well worth the $25.
Singlebarbed’s 6th Finger Scissors worked well, too. Though I have to admit to setting them on my desk a few times between snips out of pure habit.
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This Fly Tying Session Sponsored By…
Posted on November 20th, 2009 No comments
Au Sable Big Water Preservation Association
The Fiberglass Manifesto
Beattie Outdoor Productions
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This Fly Tying Session Sponsored By…
Posted on November 20th, 2009 No comments Au Sable Big Water Preservation Association
The Fiberglass Manifesto
Beattie Outdoor Productions
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Gear Review: HMH’s Tube Fly Tool
Posted on November 20th, 2009 No comments
I haven't named this one yet, but I was stoked to finally tie something I've had pictured in my head for forever now
Well I finally got a chance to play with a couple new toys yesterday. Singlebarbed’s 6th Finger Scissor , and HMH’s Starter Tube Fly Tool .
To tie tubes in the past, I’ve either used an allen wrench, or just put the tube directly in my vise’s jaws. The allen wrench works okay, but I’ve never been able to spin/stack deer hair without the wrench slipping a little in the jaws from all the torque on the tube. Putting the tube right in my vise’s jaws worked alright, too, but I ran into the same problem when spinning hair, and would sometimes crush plastic tubes.
I ordered the HMH Tube Fly Tool from J Stockard Fly Fishing . They aren’t one of my sponsors or anything, I just like doing business with them. Plus, for my recent birthday, I got a $50 gift certificate to use there from my mother-in-law.
Like all poor bastards savvy shoppers, I spent a good deal of time going through the tying materials on the J Stockard site, trying to figure out a way to squeeze everything I’ve been meaning to add to my materials arsenal onto that $50 credit. The list of stuff that I first filled my shopping cart with looked drastically different than my final order. My first instinct was to get as many hooks as I could. Then I remembered that I have been wanting to play with rattles on my carp flies, and Stalcup’s Damsel Body on my panfish flies. Then I added a bunch of synthetic hair before I ran into the HMH tube fly coneheads and remembered that this is the tying season that I go to tubes for all my streamer patterns instead of regular hooks. And before you knew it, I was removing just enough stuff that I could add the Tube Fly Tool pictured above to my cart without going over my $50 limit.
Now before I give a glowing review on this product, I’ve got to admit that after a past experience with HMH while I was writing the DayTripper blog, I really didn’t want to. I won’t go into details or anything, but I only point it out because I had sworn to myself that I’d never give a positive review for another HMH product again after what happened behind the scenes.
Yet here I am, about to tell you that the HMH Tube Fly Tool is rock solid in my vise- a Danvise by the way, so [tongue in cheek] I would guess that all of you who tie on a Renzetti/ Dynaking/ HMH/ etc., should have no problems with this tool [/tongue in cheek] .
After tying a few typical tube patterns like the one pictured waaay up at the top of this post, and being happy with the tool’s holding power, I decided it was time to pull the deer hair out.
I went through my mental rolodex of patterns I’ve been wanting to convert to a tube, and sitting way up on top was the Crayfish Muddler, a crayfish pattern developed by Hatches Magazine Editor, Will Mullis.
As I put more and more force on the thread, the hair spun, and the tool stayed put in my vise’s jaws. But more importantly, the metal rod that holds the tube didn’t bend, the tube didn’t spin, and I was happy enough with the results that I broke my blood oath to never endorse another HMH product again.
So, if you want to enter the world of tubes, I’d say this tool is well worth the $25.
Singlebarbed’s 6th Finger Scissors worked well, too. Though I have to admit to setting them on my desk a few times between snips out of pure habit.
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Two Pictures Speak 2000 Words
Posted on June 24th, 2009 No commentsI love how the algae reflect off the silvery sides of this Beaverkill Brown Trout.
Yeah, it was a good day on the water.
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The Essence of Fly Fishing
Posted on June 24th, 2009 No commentsToday, I thought I’d share the recipe I used to cook a few brook trout on my last trip to northern Michigan. It seems a majority of fly fishermen choose to release every fish they catch these days, and for the most part, I’ve done the same. However, there is an exception to every rule.
Since [...] -
TU’s National River Cleanup Day is Hardly National
Posted on June 24th, 2009 No commentsThis Saturday, June 13, 2009, Trout Unlimited is sponsoring a national stream and river cleanup day, celebrating 50 years of coldwater conservation.
Volunteers and staff will host stream clean-up projects throughout the country. Prizes will be awarded for most river miles cleaned, weirdest object found in a river or stream, most volunteer participants, among others.
You can [...] -
Bad & Good News on Coaster Brook Trout
Posted on May 19th, 2009 No commentsFrom the AP-
TRAVERSE CITY — Federal officials have decided against placing the coaster brook trout on the endangered species list.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published its decision today in the Federal Register. It said coasters were not distinct enough from other types of brook trout to justify listing them as endangered or establishing protected [...] -
How To Be A Fly Fishing Blog Superstar* Part I
Posted on April 24th, 2009 No comments*tongue firmly planted in cheek
So you wanna start a blog, eh? Or, maybe you’ve thought about it, but the whole idea of being a “blogger” turns you off from the whole idea. Do you feel you don’t take nice enough pictures, or that you can’t write well enough? Do you feel like you’d have a tough time figuring out what to write about every day? Are you afraid no one would read?
Ya see, I always get a little chuckle out of people who make some of the above remarks when the idea of starting a fly fishing blog pops up. Most of the same people are extremely active on fly fishing or fly tying message boards. They’ve got a facebook or myspace page (or both), and a couple are even on twitter. They’re already blogging. The thing is, their content is scattered across the web.
If any of the above apply to you, then this series is for you. Actually, it’s for everyone. Because everyone has a story.
Why?
The first thing you want to do is figure out why you’re doing it. I’ll use myself as an example. I write this blog cause:
- I enjoy the creative outlet
- I enjoy having my own place to talk about the stuff I’m interested in
- I enjoy the feedback, both positive and negative
- I like sharing information
Not to mention, I’ve meet some kick ass people through this blogging thing. Seriously cool people who I’d share a boat with any day.
One other reason that is often overlooked deals with the ability blogging gives you to help protect the waters you care about. After your blog has been up a while, and you’ve got a sizeable readership, you’ll have an equally sizeable voice. For example, if there were a new threat to my homewaters today, I can get the word out to hundreds of daily readers in an instant because of this blog. Some of those readers have blogs, or visit internet message boards, and chances are good they’ll let others know about the threat my homewaters face. Just like that, I’ve helped that body of water tremendously by just getting the word out.
Who are you writing for?
Let’s be honest, everyone blogging wants people to read. If that weren’t the case, they wouldn’t be publishing their content on the interwebs. So now that we’ve admitted we want people to read, we can figure out who we want to be doing the reading.
This sort of goes hand in hand with the stuff under What? (below), but basically, the people who read your blog will most likely share the same interests as yourself. It only makes sense. A perfect example is if you’re really into fly fishing for roughfish such as The Roughfisher , then the majority of your readers will also share a passion or interest in fly fishing for roughfish.
What is your blog gonna be about?
The best advice I have is to write it about the stuff you’re interested in. Maybe you’re really into rod building, or entomology, or one of the dozen other sub-hobbies in fly fishing. Maybe your passion is fly fishing for small stream brook trout, or Great Lakes Steelhead, or [insert your locale here} fly fishing, etc. Or maybe you just want to chronicle your season . I can assure you, if your blog has a specialty niche, no matter what it is, it will have an audience.
But, you don’t have to specialize. If you’re interested in all aspects of fly fishing, write about them. In fact, it will make the process of finding something to write about a little easier.
Where to find content?
Probably one of the biggest hurdles to any new blogger is the process of regularly coming up with new content. I won’t lie, it can be tough. But blogging is no different than going to the gym. Once you start doing it, it gets a lot easier, eventually becoming part of your daily routine.
There are plenty of places to find content. The first I’ll mention are Google Alerts . Just enter a search term you’re interested in and Google will send you an email whenever it’s bots come across that term. You can have alerts sent to you as they happen, daily, or weekly. For example, I’ve got alerts for all sorts of terms, including every river I fish, or have interest in. One of those is the Battenkill River. Now, whenever “Battenkill River” is mentioned on someone’s blog, or a newspaper article, or a website, or video title, etc., I get an email with the link to that story. Literally nothing is written about on the Battenkill that I don’t know about.
The other obvious places to find content are the blogs and websites you already visit on a daily basis. If you see something that you’ve got an opinion on, or you find interesting, write about it.
There are plenty of other places to find content. Going fishing, local events, friends, etc.
Getting Readers
Eventually, you might want to attract more readers. The best place to start is by letting your friends and family know you’ve been writing a blog. They’ll read, and probably let other people who are interested in fly fishing know about it.
The next group of people you want to target are other bloggers. The first way to get another blogger’s attention is to link to them- either in your blogroll, or in your content. They’ll see the referals(We’ll get into all the technical nitty gritty in Part II) and check your site out to see what you said. If they like what you’ve got going, they might add your link to their blogroll.
Another way to get the attention of other fly fishing bloggers is to read their blog and leave comments on their posts/articles. This does not mean you should spam their comments with obvious spam. Instead, only comment when you’ve genuinely got something to say. Not only does this help build friendships/contacts amongst other fly fishing bloggers, their readers who see your comment also find out about your blog.
If you frequent any of the fly fishing message boards out there, sticking your blog’s link in your signature is a great way to help people find your blog without spamming.
There are other places to get more readers, and we’ll get to those in part II
Speaking of Part II, I think this is a good time to end Part I.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART II
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Local Banter
Posted on April 24th, 2009 No commentsAnyone else in New York’s Capital District noticed the weather forecast for this week?
While fishing the Mohawk with my son the last three days, we watched the water levels fall significantly. I don’t know how many times I told him that any time the fishing is gonna be off the hook. We just need a few consecutive days of warmer air temps to get things moving. Seeing the forecast above this morning tells me that by the end of the week, there will be no excuses for not finding fish.
This is what we’ve been waiting for- at least those of us who target the area’s warmwater species. For trout and steelhead I’d like to see more mostly cloudy days, but I’m not complaining. In fact, I feel pretty good about how the the next few weeks should fish.
The bass are in that phase where they’re cruising the shallows; either solo or with a few buddies. The smaller fish are aggressively taking flies, but the big guys just aren’t ready to commit yet. Even my son who is fishing with live bait is having a tough time getting the bigger bass to suck in a glob of worms. I watched one Largemouth in the 18″ neighborhood come over to check out his wormy goodness, it’s tail came up as it’s nose literally touched those squiggly invertibrates. But he didn’t eat. While hauling in crappie after crappie yesterday, there were several bass that would repeatedly follow his crawler back to shore- again, not fully committing. I couldn ‘t help but feel I could have got one of them to take a small fly slowly hopped across the bottom, but it wasn’t my time to fish.
Word on the street says that the areas carp were active during our last little warm up, then they disappeared when things got cold again. I have a hunch that by the end of the week, I’ll have caught my first carp of ‘09.
Then there are those coldwater species to consider…
Most area streams are actually looking mighty tempting after the high flows we’ve been looking at. According to the Delaware River Club’s Blog , The Upper Delaware River System is seeing those typical early season hatches: stones, black caddis, BWO’s, etc.
The warm weather over the next week should motivate some of the Battenkill’s early season bugs to make their presence known. However, if I had a chance to get over there, I’d be flogging big streamers.
Then there are those migratory rainbows we easterners call steelhead, that are getting groovy in the Lake O tribs. Sure, every steelheader worth his weight lives for those days when you can’t feel your fingers, or you walk off the river drenched from storms that drop enough rain they could be classified as tropical storms; but you gotta love chasing chrome in a T-shirt.
Yes, us Capital Districters have plenty of options right now, not to mention those salty mofo’s who’ll be making their way up the Hudson any time now. I love this time of year. One night I’ll be tying #20 olives, 10″ woolhead streamers the next. It’s that time when you gotta have your 4wt and your 8wt with you at all times, cause you need them.
Tonight, when you get home from work, raise your favorite tall one towards the ceiling. Cause this is what we’ve been waiting all winter for.
Wintery coldness is officially over.
