Photos from IFTD and iCAST Day 4

I finally managed to get the last group of ICAST/IFTD photos captioned!  I still have more that I haven't posted yet, I'm going to try to highlight some of the booths that I really liked at the show.  Hopefully these pictures will tide you guys over for a while!

Enjoy, like, follow, subscribe, and comment!

  Thanks, Tight Lines!

     Nick

Evenin' Folks,

  I know I promised to caption these photos once I got home from the IFTD show. I'm still working on it, I promise. Things have been busy here since returning from Florida. So, as consolation, I offer up more original photos from the 2014 IFTD and iCAST show. Please enjoy!

  Tight Lines!

     Nick

Native Watercraft had a bunch of their kayaks on display.  They almost look like canoe/kayak hybrids!

Speaking of hybrids, these little hybrid kayak/drift boats from Nucanoe looked pretty sweet!

TFO had a booth jam-packed with rods.  I loved the look of all these different grips lined up in the rack.

Hobie Kayaks, the kayak you pedal! The new tandem model they introduced looks like it could be an awful lot of fun!

It was nice to see a booth from Georgia DNR at the show.  

This map shows all the fishing related companies that call Georgia home.  I was tempted to tack a Suburban Angler business card up near the Oyster Bamboo Rods sticker!

The size and shape of these Ion video cameras seems like they'd be more practical for all sorts of sportsmen to record their adventures.

I want the camo one!

They're about the same size and weight as a chunky little LED flashlight.  Definitely on my wish list!

WTP, Inc had some really cool looking self adhesive products for lure making, I think these eyes can cross over to fly tying pretty easily!

They had too many products to fit the whole booth in one shot!

All of the WTP products are made right here in the USA, too!

Redington had a huge booth with loads of awesome products on display.  I've got to try one of these Butter Sticks real soon!

This picture shows maybe a quarter of the rods Redington had on display.

Redington also had a nice display of their own reels.

A 6' 2" 2-weight Butter Stick, I had to get a close up!

A Canadian group called Mouche had a fishing cabin/lounge set up as their booth.  Check them out on Facebook, it's a really cool concept of passing on flies on the water that they were successful.

Nikko is a soft plastic bait company out of Japan.  While not necessarily for the fly angler, the minute detail of these plastics, I think, could be integrated into more realistic flies.

The front doors of the show, taken on the last day.  I had such an amazing time, I can't wait to go back next year!

Just a beautiful truck in the parking lot.  Oh yeah, it belongs to the Spanish Fly!

Winter Is Finally Over!!!

Hey there Folks,

  Thanks for checking in with me.  Now that winter is truly over and another semester of school is coming to a close, I can focus on the really important things in life...FLY FISHING!!!!  I'm afraid I haven't done much of anything fishing related in quite some time.  Last weekend it was finally warm enough to put the kayak on the water in Lake Lanier, so look for some pictures below.  I tried to stay abreast of what's going on in the industry, but since I live in the south, there is no steelhead run, no monster pike or musky and I don't own a decent pair of winter weight waders any more.  But, it's warming up, we're back into the 80s some and I'll be able to wet wade the mountain streams very soon.  So definitely keep checking back, because I plan on getting the blog up and running again in a big way this summer.  I'm still working on a post that covers the water access laws for the state of Georgia, so look for that soon.  Plus, I've noticed that with all the wonderful fly tying instructions that are on the web, in books and in magazines very few of them actually tell you how to fish the fly once it's tied, so, I've begun trying to track down that kind of information.  I'm still fishing my 6' 2-weight TFO rod, and still absolutely love it, but I've decided I'd like to get something bigger.  Not necessarily heavier, I love fishing an ultralight rod, but for casting out of the kayak on the lake I want to find an 8' or 9' rod.  I've got a very tight budget on that, so I'll try to keep updating my research progress here.  I've also been doing some research on Crappie and Bluegill.  Since I do most of my fishing in the lake and don't get up to the mountain streams as often as I'd like, I figure I need to get a better understanding of the fish that I'm catching more often.  Many flies that work on trout also work on panfish, but I'm pretty sure I could find some better flies that will target the lake slabs, and not just poppers, either!  

  I hope you all had a tolerable winter and are looking as forward to getting on the water as I am.  Thanks again for checking in and please keep coming back!

  Tight Lines,

   -Nick

If you follow me on Instagram you might've seen that I won a 3 month subscription to PostFly Box Co.  This was my first shipment.  Very nice looking flies!

  

Our first nice evening on the deck.  Enjoyed a pipe, had a Shiner Farmhouse Ale and added my PostFly Box Co. flies to my boxes.

First day on Lake Lanier this season.

This is the first and largest fish I took last weekend.  I'm pretty sure this is a male Bluegill, he took a black ant fly as soon as it smacked the water.  Hard hit and a great fight. Can anyone confirm or correct on species for me?

WoodCraft Atlanta's Open House: Hand Crafted Fishing Lures

Evenin' Folks,
  I wasn't really sure if I'd have anything to blog about this weekend.  I spent the whole past week preparing for a couple of tests at school, so fly fishing hasn't been at the forefront of my thoughts.  It's never very far off, though!  I've always had an interest in hand tool woodworking, being the son of a master carpenter, the love of wood was instilled in me at a very early age.  Men like Norm Abrams and Roy Underhill were bigger heroes to me than Wade Boggs and Kirby Puckett.  Most of my working life was spent in construction or a construction related field, so now, working on a computer all day, I've been seeking a creative outlet to work with my hands.  I've been slowly collecting some hand tools lately, preferably vintage, American made tools, to get some small projects underway.  I've got some things in the works, like a fly tying supply organizer, a bench for my patio and a small step stool, but I've been looking for things I can make from wood that are more fishing related.  I decided to try making a presentation fly box.  Not having a scroll or band saw, and preferring hand tools anyway, I've been searching for an acceptable coping saw.  I received a flyer in the mail for an open house at WoodCraft Atlanta and on special, today only, was an English made, wooden handled coping saw that I thought would fit the bill nicely, until a vintage American model can be located.
   The open house proved to be quite popular, the parking lot was almost full when I pulled in before 10:00 this morning.  The store had some great show specials and discounts, including an additional 10% off your purchase if you arrived before 10am (sweet!).  As soon as I walked in I nabbed the last coping saw they had off the shelf and started checking out the demonstrations.
  The list of demonstrations for the day was pretty extensive: offset woodturning, bowl turning, scroll saw use, band saw tuning, hand plane tuning, hand plane use, and decorative inlay.  And those were just the morning demonstrations on Saturday, there were at least as many after noon and also when the show started on Friday.   But, the exhibitor I was most curious to see was Brian Richterkessing, from the Lure Foundry.
  The listing on the flyer only said "Hand made fishing lures", so I really didn't know what I was going to find.  As it turns out, Brian lathe-turns large, hardwood muskie lures following vintage designs and patterns from the 1920's through the 1950's.  These stunning lures are all colored using the various hardwood species.  Brian doesn't use any dies or stains.  As Brian says, these would make great display pieces for the cabin or lake house, but they also catch fish.  Each lure is tuned to match the swim patterns of the vintage lure they're based on.  Brian is even experimenting with different densities of the hardwood to get the lures to swim at different depths!
  When you purchase a lure from the Lure Foundry, it comes packed in  a hand made, hardwood display box padded with burlap.  There is also a multi-lure box if you purchase more than one.  Or the granddaddy of the group, the Ultimate Tacklebox, a hand crafted box that holds a minimum of 24 of these big predator catchers.  If that's not enough for you, the Lure Foundry also crafts wooden rod tubes and traditional style floats with the same care and attention as the lures.
  Brian let me take some pictures of his lures at the open house, so I'll just let them speak for themselves.  If you're interested in seeing more, or in purchasing from the Lure Foundry, you should check out his website, LureFoundry.com.  I hope Brian doesn't mind, he's inspired me to try to make one of these lures for myself.  While at WoodCraft I picked up a couple pieces of hardwood to give luremaking a go.  Keep watching the blog, I'll post some pictures when I get it finished up.
  Tight Lines and Happy Fishing,
       -Nick

A three piece set of vintage style Muskie lures made of Redheart and American Holly.

A finished lure, three blanks, and a box lid in progress.

A single lure in it's presentation box.

The Ultimate Tackle Box, three cedar lures and you can see a rod tube to the left.

Some awesome looking floats in their presentation box.  I may have to try making one of these boxes too!