Philip Smith
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The golden rainbow trout originated from a single rainbow trout that was spawned in the
fall of 1954 in West Virginia. Typically, these fish are more of a brilliant golden color
than the palomino rainbow trout, which has a color phase intermediate between the
golden and normally pigmented rainbow trout.[hr:1usmy191][/hr:1usmy191]
Twinkies, ‘Naner Trout, Yeller Chubs, etc. Stupid-Psychotic-Freakozoid fish. They are lightbulbs in the stream. Around here the bait chuckers drive up and down the rivers looking for “them gold ones” which give away the location of likely a whole pod of rainbows, where they sit down on their buckets and commence to cleaning out a hole. I hate those yellow p.o.s fish.
That said, I’ve caught several and always laugh every time I do. I have one photo of one I laid out beside my bamboo rod that got a great laugh from my buddies. I’ll see if I can dig it up sometime.
You know, I’m really lucky then. I normally shoot long exposures with a tripod, but I have occassionally gotten some really great 1″ to 2″ shots ‘freehand’. Always does better with a pod though. Here are a few of my long exposure shots…
http://www.vandaliarodworks.com/brookiestreams1/index.html
The 8th picture in that gallery (Oct_07fixed.jpg) is actually freehand on about 1″ exposure…and with a digital point and shoot $100 Samsung camera if you believe that.
I definetely won’t be sucked into buying lenses just to be buying them. I am just trying to gather some ideas to be thinking about for a while. I work for state government in one of the poorest paying public employee states in the union so I’m certainly not going to hemmorhage money just for fun.
Dusty, thus far it is doing what I want to do. One thing that I did on my film SLR that I haven’t figured out exactly how to do with the digital yet is multiple exposures on a single frame. I guess with digital the concept is to take several shots and combine them post production with software, but I liked being able to do it right on the camera before. Some of the reviews I’ve read on the XTi vs. the 40D were that the 40D was more ‘user friendly’ in terms of functions. Personally, I’m not having any trouble with finding functions and changing up stuff like white balance, shutter speed, etc. Maybe I’m too simplistic in how I shoot stuff or something because I’m missing this ‘complicated’ thing.
In case you are interested, here are a couple of galleries of my kids that I’ve shot with the new XTi in the past couple of days…
http://www.vandaliarodworks.com/blackwhite/index.html (Note, the easter egg picture was not with the XTi)
Was this with the 50?
http://lucidarc.com/Photoblog/index.php?showimage=55
Geez, there is like – no depth of field on that one. Thanks dude. Good advice from all. Gotta start saving some coin. I think I like the idea of IS, particularly for longer exposures on those high gradient streams. I normally carry a cheap tripod with me, which is a real pain. If I could get by with shooting 1″-2″ shots by bracing on my knees with an IS lens, that would rule.
I shot another 200 or so shots last night of my kids at the state capitol building. The kit lens does pretty well. I’ve got the monochrome shots down to a freaking science they are so easy.
On the body thing, that was what I found out through researching. I had a pretty good deal on a lightly used Canon 30D, but it was still more than a new XTi with kit lens so I decided that ease of use in function was not really worth the extra money to me. I also don’t really care for live view anyway, it seems to burn up battery.
Thanks again to all of you guys for your advice.
Thanks a lot. I tend to shoot a lot of shallow depth of field myself. I also shoot a bunch of long exposures since my passion in fishing is native brook trout and those high gradient streams and waterfalls are so much fun at 1 to 3 seconds. I also like macro shots…bugs, flowers, etc. So a macro lens would definetely give me the close up macro as well as the shallow depth of field shots, but the few times I’ve held a camera with a wide angle lens in my hands I was blown away with the possibilities.
Not really sure what a “fast lens” delivers. Can you elaborate? Somehow I don’t think that necessarily means shooting a lot of shots in burst…which I don’t really do.
I’ve never made a dime off of any of my photography and don’t know that I ever will. Although a 8X10 print I recently donated to a TU banquet brought $225.00 at auction. In a dream world I’d like to sell enough shots to pay for the equipment, but I don’t know that what I like to shoot is overly marketable. So I guess what I’m saying here is that my price range is sub $500. I saw a Sigma 28-105mm for around $300ish that I was looking into. A local photographer told me to stick with the Canon lenses for this camera and yet another photographer told me that the Sigma’s and Tamrons were pretty good. I’m confused.
Got a 4 day backpacking trip coming up first weekend of May, either Seneca Creek backcountry, Cranberry backcountry or a marathon of brookie tribs in the Shavers Fork backcountry. Haven’t finalized it yet with my film, er, fishing crew.
Speaking of which, my goal is to get my next DVD – Vandalia Angler II – done by late summer. I’ve got about 5 hours of footage for it now and hardly any of it satisfies my vision for the project.
Hopefully will have several other backpacking/fishing trips in addition to tons of time on local water.
Going to Colorado for a cutthroat marathon in late August. I’m a native species nutcase.
Tons of Trout Unlimited projects are in my lap right now too.
AEG has gotten a lot of mileage out of that photo. I think the composite cork grip looks cheap.
I like the new “hardcore extreme gen-X” influence on fly fishing, I put together my own videos using indy rock, post regularly on The Drake and such. But in the end, it is still “fishing” and “fishing” is a very hard thing to make ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ by its nature. Most seasoned fly anglers don’t fish in crowds, at least not in these parts, so what use is high fashion apart from catching your eye in a catalog? I’m a gen-x’r, but I like a good mix…I’ll wear my Beck t-shirt under my traditional looking vest (I hate Star Wars stormtrooper vests & packs myself), fish my foam chernobyl ant with a partridge & orange dropper on my bamboo rod matched with large arbor reel – for carp. In the end, I’m going out to catch a fish in the most comfortable, fun and efficient means, not make a statement.
I’m out on adventure angling videos for the most part though. There’s a disconnect. I’m a middle class angler, catching 7″ westslope brookies in Colorado is more appealing and more of a realistic desire for me than catching exotic fish in exotic locations at an even more exotic pricetag.
Thanks for the promo Jay, but right now I’m not taking any new rod orders for a little while. I’m backed up almost 2 years and hate to string folks along. I just do rods in my part-spare-leftover-time.
If you do decide on cane, which is a good choice as far as I’m concerned, I can provide some arbitrary taper advice. There are other makers out there putting out perfectly good rods for less than $700, but you’ve got to research it a little bit. The warranty won’t be that of graphite or glass, but the fishing will be much better 😉
I can’t make any recommendations on graphite or glass, but the Scott F series that Zach mentioned have got me a little giddy to secretly try some non-living rods again…when noone is looking of course.
Heavily weighted black woolly bugger with a gray hare’s ear nymph…but I guess that really wouldn’t qualify as a “dropper”. My favorite dry/dropper combo is a HHAP (Hot Hayne Parachute – a local fly) dropped to a soft hackle red brassie, PT nymph or hare’s ear.
Hot Hayne Parachute “AuSable”to…
or a squirrel tail nymph
Totally SWAG’ed statistics: Fly fisherman comprise maybe 5% of total anglers at best. Half of that 5% ever catch salmonids that size ever. Of that half, maybe 1/10th of 1% are eccentric enough to wear something like that while holding something like that. Not to belittle the fact that he picked a fly to match his outfit.
Which makes this exercise totally awesome. That is the photo of the day for sure!
Matt, that is flippin awesome. That shot of the tarpon jump you linked to definetely deserves a frame. That’s quality work, top to bottom!
There are a couple of streams in WV where BWO’s will come off all winter long. Sadly, the best of these has not been visited by me at all this winter. A correction I shall try to make in the next week or two. My favorite pattern is a Usual tied with dun colored wing and tail and olive body.
I don’t have a photo of the larger BWO Usuals that I carry, but here is one for the famous Elk River (WV) where fishing the smallest of flies on 10X is the norm and not really thought of as eccentric. I should note that I’m not worth a crap when fishing that tippet. The guys that do it a lot are good at it, but I don’t subscribe to that masochism so the few times that I’ve been in those situations of throwing even 8X and size 32’s I hook a lot of fish, but break off almost all of ’em.
A #32 BWO Usual…
Joel, that pic with the BWO’s under the rainbow is sweeeet! I dig Lando’s shot too.
cool mugs.
couple of shots from last weekend…
ghost shot that blurred on me on the second exposure, which actually made it kinda cool…
another one I almost scrapped, but the more I looked at it I liked it…
The only two podcasts I subscribe to are the Itinerant Angler podcast and the Dave Ramsey Show podcasts (financial).
Other favorites that clog up my ipod are National Geographic Atmospheres, Nat. Geographic Wild Chronicles, 2 minute photoshop tricks, Adobe Photoshop Quicktips, Creative Photoshop, Photoship Killer Tips, Science Talk (Scientific American), PRI-Living On Earth among others. I had some of the other fly fishing podcasts for a while, but they bored me.
My favorite IA podcasts thus far are the one with Robert Behnke (amazing dude, I could go for a few more of these), Brian O’Keefe and Bernard Ramanauskus (sp?). The last one with Charles Jardine was cool too.
part of the problem is that you really can’t make a 9′ 7 wt. that is actually fun to fish with bamboo unless it is hollow built. Hollow building doesn’t come cheap. Another problem is QC. I’ve seen several of these old rods and own a few where they even messed up as much as glueing up some of the strips with the enamel side in (hex rods are 6 strips with enamel side out/pith in…some of these actually flipped them any which way). Some of their bevellers were not very good. Lots of different things. Some of those companies put out some really great rods though (Granger, South Bend, Heddon). But those same companies put some stinky ones too.
Read those books I told you about. Too much info to put on here, it’s all in there. Black’s book tells you the history of all these companies, some will surprise you. Geirach will tell you which rods are great.
Huge difference between the majority of production rods and a higher end rod. “Production” is used loosely here. What does that mean? Leonards were production. Hawes was production.
If interested, your first task is to go directly to amazon.com, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Purchase George Black’s “Casting A Spell” (this is your book on the history of the craft including how it was done)
Geirach’s “Fishing Bamboo”
http://www.amazon.com/Fishing-Bamboo-Anglers-Passion-Traditional/dp/159921217X/ref=pd_sim_b_img_3
and if you’re really feeling saucy, pick up the DVD “Troutgrass”. Most of the cheap old rods are 8′-9′ telephone poles. Slow and heavy. The difference between one of them and a rod based on the Dickerson 7613 or a Paul Young Driggs River is similar to the difference between fly casting with your kid’s snoopy rod and a Winston. Slow they are not. Heavy they are not. Like it you will. Heavier than a graphite rod of similar size? Yes. Enough to be a problem? No, not that I can tell. Is a fraction of an ounce really an issue?
The rod I fish the most is a 7′ 4wt based on a Cattanach taper. It is so much fun. I would consider it medium fast in action. It has this cool little hinge on unloading a cast that does a fantastic job of rolling over big heavy tandem rigged streamer/nymph combos and putting them right where you want ’em.
The “slow” connotation is incorrect. I made a Driggs taper (7’2″ 5 wt.) that was lightning in a bottle. It was almost too much. You had to force yourself to hold up on casts to keep short range (20′ to 30′) casts from slamming the water too hard. Lee Orr made the Lovely Reed’s version of the 7613 that was so fast it was like casting a broom, I hated it. We’ve been making the Russ Gooding tweak of the 7613 (7’6″ 5 wt.) that is much more pleasant to cast in my opinion. I fished the Madison and the Gallatin this past summer with a 7’9″ 5 wt (my tweak on the 7613) and was not handicapped at all, it was awesome.
I don’t know. I’ve only used it twice and haven’t filled up 2GB in one setting yet. I used it a ton on that one day’s worth of snowboarding. But would it handle a week’s worth in Montana? Not likely, but I wouldn’t shoot much more than underwater stuff with it anyway. I use my other point and shoot digital with a better lens for above water shots.
