Category: Equipment

gear reviews

Zippers on Waders: A Fly Fishing Guide’s Review

Simms Freestone Zippered Waders

Fly Fishermen find relief with Zippered Waders Do not buy zippered waders, particularly if you’ve traveled around the sun fifty times or more.  The simple reason is that you may never be able to live without them again.  The ability to urgently open up the waders to relieve myself without taking off outer wear has [...]

Wading Staffs: A Northern California Fly Fishing Guide’s Review

James and Jeff wading deep

Fly Fishing Guides in the Mount Shasta area have some of the most challenging wading on the planet.  Rivers including the Pit, McCloud and Upper Sacramento are located in canyons with steep gradients creating strong currents which combined with bowling ball sized slippery rocks offer a great testing ground for waders, boots and wading staffs. [...]

Spey Rod Gathering , Rogue River September 20th

Gary Anderson at Speyorama

Switch Rod Demo for Anderson Custom Rods at Touvelle Park Craig presented a program on casting and fishing switch rods at Touvelle Park on the Rogue River this weekend as part of Gary Anderson’s spey gathering.  Gary is owner of Anderson’s Custom Rods and  hosted this free event.  Fellow presenters included Whitney Gould and Brian [...]

Rogue River March 16th

Bob Meiser

Bob & Will Bob Meiser,  Will Johnson and I have wanted to get together forever.  We finally settled on a date to fish the Rogue.   Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and we arrived in Shady Cove to find the Rogue muddied and flooded.  Fortunately Bob is a master flyrod designer and builder and [...]

Switch Rod Techniques and Tactics

First Published in California Fly Fisher Magazine, April 2008. I believe in magic. Deceiving a fish with an artificial fly is all the evidence required and I consider fly rods the wands that allow anglers to perform this bit of magic. Some rods are best suited for performing particular magical acts.  Rods with smooth classic [...]

Why Switch?

First published in California Fly Fisher, February 2007 “Boys and their toys,” Jerri said as I hung up the phone. “How many Spey rods do you own?” Uh oh, I hadn’t realized my wife was listening. “Five,” I offered weakly, “but one is for sale and two are actually switch rods.” “Switch rods?” she asked. [...]