Zach Matthews
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I wasn’t able to locate any clear heat-shrink, but I am told it exists. I grabbed some black just to see if it would work; sure does, works great.
Zach
This is a family site, but let’s not take things to extremes. You caught a big veiny strap on? Yeah, I think we need to see those pics.
Zach
Mike –
What I like to do is firmly secure a loop of bite wire into the hook shank when I am first tying the fly. Compress it tightly so it just sticks out the back in a straight line, maybe half of the way to the tail end of the fly. Then, if you find you’re getting short strikes, take a heavy gauge, sharp hook like a Gamakatsu Octopus, generally a couple steps down from the main hook size (so like a size 2 stinger for a 1/0 EP fly).
Pass the metal bite wire loop through the eye of the hook, then open it up and slide the back end of the hook back through it. You’ll make an iron loop-to-loop connection and it ought to be stiff enough that the hook stays put. If it makes you nervous you can also thread a stiff piece of plastic tubing like for aquarium lines on the wire before you thread it, then jam that over your connection for added security.
Oh and I usually reverse the direction of the stinger so it sticks up rather than down; any hard chomps will push the stinger through the roof plate of their mouths and it won’t wobble out.
Zach
For my Rebel camera I bought a Manfrotto 682B Monopod this summer for our West Yellowstone trip. It was easy to carry around even up steep mountain trails and fast to extend and shoot. Plus, it has 3 small steel feet you can extend out on the bottom for more stability when needed. It was perfect for my needs and situation.
Randy –
Simms has the market almost cornered on high-end waders. They indisputably make the best wader product on the planet, but you do pay for it. People have been willing to pay American-made prices for a really high end durable product like that, because they can see the advantages and they know they’ll get 5-10 years of use out of any given wader.
Compare that to the coat market though. Simms has any number of competitors there (Patagonia, Marmot, North Face, Mountain Hardware, Cloudveil, and on and on and on). Every single one of those competitors gets their coats made in Asia, and with a coat, you don’t have the immersion factor which so quickly separates the truly great products from those that are simply adequate. If Simms wanted to, it has the technology to make a full-body breathable wetsuit that would be watertight, but above the waist that technology is wasted.
Consequently, Simms also makes its coats overseas so it can offer them for price parity with its competitors. Would you pay $500 for a wading jacket? I kind of doubt it, especially when you can get a competitor’s for $350 (and unlike with waders, you’ll never be able to tell a performance difference). And even if YOU were sufficiently motivated to bite the bullet, the rest of the market is not.
The good news is this move to a larger facility is clearly evidence that Simms is thriving here in America making its waders, and perhaps with more capacity, they’ll be able to bring a few more items back from overseas and keep a price edge through volume.
Zach
I hate to say this because I think the felt sole ban is very well-intentioned, but I view it as ineffective and frankly a safety hazard.
There are just too many other means for spores you’d need a microscope to see to travel from watershed to watershed.
Fish kill was caused by some kind of management issue in the lake; there was a dead zone of anaerobic water, completely depleted of oxygen, which got sucked into the tailwater during a period of intense August heat, thus suffocating all the fish, from what I understand.
Local flies are no more complex than any tailwater patterns anywhere.