One of my customers asked for a handle that is easier to clamp to a workbench or furling stand. This is what I came up with:
It is massive! The weight balances the mechanism nicely though. It feels great in the hand and can be easily clamped or bolted through the two 1/4″ holes.
On Saturday morning, Nick and I met up with our friends Aaron and Ethan to head north to White Mountains of New Hampshire. On the way up, it was obvious that the rivers were swollen from all of the rain we had through July. I have never seen them this high, this late in the summer. We stopped at our favorite pancake house for breakfast before hitting the trail.
It was a short drive to the Lincoln Woods parking area and trailhead from there. We had a lot … Continue Reading
Several months ago, I blogged about my rediscovery of an old book that presented a different technique for making continuously tapered, knotless horse hair fly lines. I reproduced the technique and improved on it slightly. That was all covered in the original post.
Given the large response (believe it or not!) I had to that post, I decided to write an article for the Webzine Power Fibers covering the same topic with a lot more detail and full color photographs.
Power Fibers is published quarterly by Todd Talsma … Continue Reading
Last month I posted a recipe on tying the simple tenkara fly that I saw Dr. Ishigaki use at his presentation in the Catskills.
This morning I got an email from CM_Stewart (the fellow who introduced me to tenkara and told me about Dr. Ishigaki’s presentation). Here is what CM_Stewart had to say:
I thought about sending this when I first saw your description of Dr. Ishigaki’s flies, but decided it wasn’t important.
I still think it’s not important, but decided you might want to know. Your instructions for tying one of … Continue Reading
I love Dutch Oven cooking! My “specialty” is Dutch Oven Cobbler. I’ve been making it since I was a Boy Scout back in the “70s” and I make it now with my son’s Boy Scout troop. Here is my recipe.
Ingredients
Preparation
Some people line their Dutch Oven with aluminum foil to make cleanup easier, but I am a purist and prefer to cook directly in a well-seasoned oven.
Pour the cans of fruit into … Continue Reading
This falls in the “this eclecticguy is crazy” department! Or, maybe not! I’ve been furling fly fishing leaders for a number of years and have known about these twisting engines. Darrel Martin has photos of a reproduction engine and a woodcut of an old engine in his book “The Fly-Fisher’s Craft: The Art and History“. I did a little research and called Darrel to ask about his engine before designing this one. The trickiest part is the gearing. There are 3 smaller gears around a central gear that … Continue Reading
Now that I am serious about reelsmithing, I decided to design and order a hand stamp to properly mark my reels. I based the logo on my rod building logo:
There is not a lot of space on a reel for a large logo, so I ended up designing and ordering 2 stamps. One is just of the fish logo and the other my maker’s mark with my name and location. Here is a photo of the finished stamp:
The maker’s stamp is only … Continue Reading
Many of you know that I make my own brass fly fishing reels. I’ve had a lot of interest in reelsmithing from around the world, so I’ve decided to launch a forum so we can share tips, tools, photos, and other information. Right now I host it off of this domain at The Reelsmithing Forum. It is implemented in phpBB – a pretty nice Open Source forum application. I have not had time to develop a new site template yet, so this is pretty plain vanilla for now. Take a look, register, build a reel, tell others!
cheers,
Michael
I just returned from a great afternoon of fishing tenkara style on Jordon Lake in north central North Carolina. That makes 4 states that I’ve had the pleasure to fish in this style. Jordon is a large lake with many species including large mouth bass, striped bass, big cat fish, sunfish, and perch. I caught a nice little bluegill on my first cast while my 2 sons and nephew watched in amazement. They were all anxious to give it a try!
My youngest son and nephew are both 12 so I let them take my Yamame rod. My oldest son has … Continue Reading
Several weeks ago I made a quick post about the tenkara flies Dr. Ishigaki gave me at the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. I’ve had a couple of requests to follow up with the recipe, so here goes.
Materials
Hook: Tiemco 100 – sizes 16, 14, 12, 10
Thread: any large nylon or polyester thread will do. Dr. Ishigaki uses cheap nylon thread from a discount store. I have been using Danville 3/0 fly tying thread.
Hackle: India Hen, Partridge, or Pheasant soft hackle
Tying
Notice that I did not specify colors for the thread and hackle. That’s because … Continue Reading