The Ultra Wave Rod

In mid-August 2010, I stopped by the home Dee, the Ladyfisher and her husband Neil, the editor for FAOL, who is also my uncle and long time fishing companion. I had hardly settled into a chair when they brought out a rod tube, explaining that the rod was a new design from Global dorber Group, Inc. and was call the Ultra Wave, and they wanted to see what I thought of it.

YELLOWSTONE COUNTRY TERRESTRIALS

I have been frequently asked what types of patterns were the most under-utilized on Montana waters. Simply put, terrestrials are the most effective and under-utilized patterns on Montana waters. Now I know that many of you are already using hopper patterns, but I am referring to ants, beetles and crickets.

PORTABLE FLY TYING BOX

I’m not much inclined to do it anymore but there was a time when I never took a fly fishing trip without a fly tying kit. It started when JC and I were beginning to fish the Michigan’s Au Sable River back in the early 60’s. We were catching bugs and tying flies to match them and we needed to have the ability to tie flies on the spot. Thus began the evolution of my own portable fly tying box.

ENTITLEMENT?

About this time of year there are a bunch of sporting shows around the country, some with quite good fly fishing aspects to them. That of course gives the manufacturers a place to show off their new products. I’m as curious as the next guy (and maybe more) so I’ve always enjoyed not just attending the Spring shows but in casting the newest and latest fly rods, handling and ogling new reels and in general seeing whatever the new goodies are.

PLAYING WITH EMOTIONS

The weather has been driving me nuts. Temperatures are up and down.

THE CHOCOLATE SUNSET

The Chocolate Sunset is one of my favourite flies for fishing through the late afternoon into the evening - Jack Murray

I believe that all our readers are aware that the economic downturn has impacted all sectors of our economy and certainly fly-fishing and FAOL are no exceptions. For this reason we are currently discontinuing the monthly drawing. The items that we gave away each month were mostly donated by our sponsors, and with the current economic conditions impacting their bottom line we do not feel that it is proper for us to continue to ask them to donate things from their inventory. If conditions change we will revisit this practice. Meanwhile we wish to thank all our sponsors for all the wonderful items that they have provided for our readers for the last several years.

Secondly, although not completely tied to the economy, we are going to change the publication schedule of FAOL. For the past 14+ years FAOL has put up a new issue each Monday. For several years the Ladyfisher burned the midnight oil each week to get an issue out each Monday. In recent years Ron Tidd has done the technical part of getting the issue posted to the website each week. I edit the articles and other material that we receive, select an image for the front page and supply a quote. Ron does our tech work for free and since he has a ‘real job’ and a family to provide for the weekly production schedule is difficult for him. We depend on our readers for most of our material, and recently those submissions have fallen off. We have a few faithful contributors and we are very thankful for them, but we need more material to produce a timely and relevant weekly magazine. For these reasons we are going to change the publication schedule from a weekly issue to an every other week format. Each issue will remain up for two weeks rather than one week. This will have no impact on the bulletin board or the chat room.

We will implement this new publication schedule starting with the March 14th issue. After March 14th the next new issue will be posted on March 28th.

We trust that our readers will understand the necessity for these changes. FAOL will continue to offer articles on fly fishing, fly tying, book and product reviews free to our readers. We all pray for better economic times ahead for everyone.