The 12 Days of Christmas Starts Soon

This post is just a heads up that the yearly craziness of gift giving called the 12 Days of Christmas starts on the morning of Monday, December 9th and will run through Friday, December 20th.

As in years past, I've set this up as a series of daily giveaways where all you have to do is send in an email each day to participate and the random number generator picks a winner or winners early the next morning before I start off another giveaway for that day.

This is the third year of the 12 Days of Christmas giveaways and each time around it's grown a little bigger than the last.  This year's sponsors could not have been more supportive with over three dozen gifts to be given away over the course of the event.

The 12 Days of Christmas is sponsored this year by the generosity of the following gear companies...

BOZEMAN REEL
COSTA
ECHO
FINN UTILITY
GHILLIE KETTLE
GOAT HEAD SOLE SPIKES
HOWLER BROTHERS
MARSH WEAR
NATURE BOY DESIGNS
ORVIS
PATAGONIA
REDINGTON
REP YOUR WATER
RIO PRODUCTS
SIMMS
SMITHFLY
STORMY KROMER
SWIFT FLY FISHING
THE LITTLE RED BOOK OF FLY FISHING
TIPPETAC
TOPO DESIGNS
VERMONT FLY GUYS

The 12 Days of Christmas giveaways are a lot of fun, allow me to highlight gear and companies that I really dig, and of course offers everyone a chance to win some phenomenal prizes.

This is also a very fitting way, within this season of giving, for me to say thank you to the readership that makes writing this website each morning before work (or late at night before bed) more than worthwhile and a lot of damn fun.  Thank you. 

See you bright and early on Monday morning.  Please don't start sending emails before then.

Holiday Cheers...

FIBO GOING (REALLY) BENDO

There have been a couple photos and a video that have surfaced in the last few days that really show off how strong and flexible fiberglass can be as a fly rod material.  The first assumption that some will make in seeing these examples is that fiberglass is nothing more than a whippy stick but the thing to consider is that within that bend, and it doesn't have to be this extreme of course, you have the ultimate in tippet protection, as the fly rod works as a long shock absorber, and you are also leveraging the weight and fight of a fish across the entire length of the fly rod blank.

Oh yeah, and you can feel every head shake and movement that the fish makes deep into the cork.  It's very thrilling if you've never experienced it before. 

WARNING...these photos and video might make you cringe.  They do me.

Cortney Boice shows off the flexibility of the 2nd generation Blue Halo blanks which I hear are pretty stellar.  The blanks are also on sale right now and worth checking out.

The Swift Fly Fishing Epic 686 takes a series of serious abuse with some "thugs" in Switzerland and it seems to handle it just fine, though don't expect me to try this at home with my own Epic 686.

Lastly, Shawn Combs of Orvis shows off the bend of the Superfine Glass three weight with their fancy gadget at the Orvis media event this past August.  I'm kind of surprised no one in the crowd didn't yell "BREAK IT" but instead Shawn backed off the pressure.  I'm not sure it would have snapped anyway.



GLASS IS NOT DEAD.  Believe that.

Leases Threathen The Holy Waters

Somewhere around twenty years ago, I caught my first trout on a Royal Coachman Trude just downstream from Burton's Landing, which begins the nine mile stretch of the famed Au Sable River "Holy Waters".  This six inch brown trout, which more or less flew out of the water to devour my dry fly, fully changed my focus with fly fishing.  The rest of that summer, and the next couple summers after, any time I could sneak away from work, you could find me somewhere on one of the Au Sable River branches or the nearby Manistee River. 

I was beyond smitten then with the Holy Waters and continue to be today.  It's part of my angling DNA and it's an area that I will always try to protect even if I live over 900 miles away now.

Below is parts from an email that I received from the Anglers of the Au Sable regarding a large areas of property which have been sold for potential oil and gas development and want to suggest that readers take a few minutes to read through this post and then visit the Anglers website for more background information as well.

Excerpts from the Anglers of the Au Sable email blast...

In late October, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources auctioned nearly 2,800 acres in and near the Au Sable Holy Waters corridor (between the Whirlpool and Thendara) for potential oil and gas development. Most if not all of these leases were purchased by Encana, the Canadian company which is using massive amounts of water for deep-fracking wells in the Manistee River basin.

A number of these proposed leases could allow surface wells, pumping stations, and pipelines. Many of these parcels are in the Rayburn Tract. This wonderful piece of state land was once private, and slated for development. Only the efforts of dedicated conservationists prevented condominium development on the parcel, and allowed it to become public land, accessible to all.
We urged the DNR not to lease these lands. They did it anyway.

There’s one more opportunity to stop this. A few minutes of your time could really help.  
While the auction is complete, the final decision on whether or not to finalize the leases will come on December 12. Before that comes to pass, please let DNR Director Keith Creagh know that you support leaving the Holy Waters undeveloped. Personalized letters are best. Form letters are not helpful.

As late as November 25th, we met with DNR Director Creagh, and requested that he not authorize these new Holy Water leases.  At this meeting he requested letters from our membership supporting our position.

Please send an email to DNR-Director@michigan.gov.  Also, if you copy us on your communications to Director Creagh, we can hand-deliver all member comments to the Michigan Natural Resources Commission on December 12 where the final decision on the leases will be made. To do so, send a copy of your communications to info@ausableanglers.org.

Finally, we can’t tell you what to write and we suspect emotions among many members will run high because of this news. But it is most helpful if your communications to the DNR are professional and well-reasoned rather than emotional rants.

Thank you for your consideration – and for your dedication to the Au Sable River.  Rusty would be proud.

There are a lot of requests for your time for various conservation projects but please consider sending an email voicing your opinion on this and ask that this area not be developed for oil and gas production.  This area deserves protection for so many reasons.

Please visit the Anglers of the Au Sable website for more information.

The Fine Tackle Workshop

I am always interested in the spaces that many of the small shop builders do their work and this is an interesting glimpse inside the Fine Tackle workshop of Christian Hörgren.  Not to many fancy tools and this small room is more about what he is doing with his hands.  I am stoked to see Christian flying the Comrade flag as well.  What a great space for him to do his work.

Click Image To View Larger

If you saw the inside of the shops of most of the small shop builders, you would be very surprised by the limited work area each of them have and yet they produce some of the finest fly rods that are being made right now with exceptional quality clearly being evident.

Christian's latest build is on the yet to be fully released Swift Fly Fishing Epic 480 blank in chestnut brown.  The color of this blank is certainly striking, as is Christian's work.  He also keeps teasing us with "The Can" fly reel too.

Check out the Fine Tackle website for more images of this build and follow the Facebook page to keep up with Christian's latest projects.

Casting For Recovery - Holiday Auction

The 2013 Holiday Auction listings for Casting 4 Recovery went live yesterday and one of the many items up for bid is a Graywolf Rods built Swift Fly Fishing Epic 476 with components from Lemke Concepts.

This custom fly rod is another great example of Shane Gray's work and has an estimated value of $600.  Bidding is open for another week and will close on the night of December 12th, 2013.

Check out the Casting For Recovery website for more information about this worthy organization and check out the 2013 Holiday Auction website as well for more images of this build and consider placing a bid.

Becca Schlaff's Latest Originals

Lately, Michigan artist Becca Schlaff has been unveiling a string of fresh oil originals and I am not sure anyone has made a carp look more attractive than this first striking abstract.  The rest of the paintings that follow in this post and on her website are all quite excellent and it's no wonder that her work is showing up in various places online and in print media as well.

 

Check out Becca Schlaff's website for more on her available originals.  Many of her paintings are also available as a print in various sizes on canvas or photo print.  Check the merchandise page for more information.

Orvis Superfine Glass

I am stoked to debut the Orvis Superfine Glass video today on T.F.M. and it's really neat how they showed these fly rods from the fabric being rolled on the mandrels to finished fly rods flexing on the water.



Shawn Combs, and the product designers at Orvis, have put a lot of time and effort into the fly rods of the Superfine Glass series and I am beyond impressed with the final product.  It's no wonder that these fly rods won the Fly Fisherman Magazine 2014 Best Gear Award.

The Superfine Glass fly rods hit the mark with function in progressive tapers, a positive price point for a Vermont built fly rod, and classic looks that honor Orvis's past generations of fiberglass offerings.

I will soon have demos of all three of the fly rods in the Superfine Glass series available in the T.F.M. Fly Rod Loan Program and look for these fly rods to be available at your local Orvis shop and online early in 2014 for purchase.