While perusing other fishing blogs, I stumbled upon this gem:
I wonder how big a hook you’d need to tie up a baby duck fly.
Part of me is sad to see the baby duck get eaten (cuz babies are cute from any species with at least 2 legs, except possibly humans, except for my son 🙂 ) – but then again, it’s really cool to see a *fish* (other than a shark) eat something other than another fish or a bug (or a cottonwood seed).
I wonder if we can get Discovery to ditch Shark Week next year in favor of Pike Week?
Pike is one of the fish that is on my list of fish to catch. I tried once – coincidentally in Fairbanks (where this video was taken). I was a kid, we were on our way back from a week’s stay in Kenai, Alaska. We’d driven from Oregon to Alaska in our motor home, and we stayed a couple days in Fairbanks on the way back, at a little RV park that sat on a manmade pond that was choked full of pike. I fished literally for about 14 hours – from the time I got up and ate breakfast, until about 2 AM the next morning (it never got dark, early-dusk was about as dark as it got, and by 11PM or so, the sun was high in the sky again just like it was noon.)
I tried spoons, plastic worms, spinners, and jigs – all the tackle I had with me at the time – and couldn’t get a single pike to chomp. Now I want to pursue them with my new 8 weight fly rod. ODFW needs to get with some stocking of these toothy monsters in some of the man-made lakes around the state!
I’ve liked Cabela’s house brand fly rods for a long time. I know some folks will get worked up because they’re made in China and Korea – and not here in the US of A – but unless those folks are tooling around in an oooold car made by one of the Big Three – then they’ve paid a lot more for foreign made goods than I did for all of my fly rods. Pick your battles.
My first taste of Cabela’s fly rods was with the excellent Three Forks 3 weight, 7 foot rod. I literally wore mine out, and had to obtain a new butt section for it after a number of years (I wore the reel seat out, the cork was fine, as was the rod blank). My second Cabela’s rod was a Fish Eagle fly rod, a 9 footer for a 5 or 6 weight line. It was either a 4 or 5 piece pack rod – I didn’t have that rod long – as I had to sell it when I needed cash. It was a fine rod, though.
The Wind River 4 weight is my 3rd Cabela’s rod purchase – and I should be getting a Three Forks 8 weight Monday or Tuesday of next week, which I will put to hard use and give another review of in the future.
I got the Wind River on a whim – I had been perusing the Cabela’s website, and noticed they were running a 50% off special on the Wind River rods – so I snatched up the 8’6″ 4 piece 4 weight for the princely sum of $49.99, figuring it would be hard to go wrong for the price.
I mated the rod up with my Argus 5/6 reel (Argus is made by WW Grigg, and is their reel brand) and originally paired the rod up with a Cortland Fairplay 4 weight rocket taper floating line.
My first few outings with the Wind River tickled me – it cast better than I honestly expected, and was lighter in hand than I figured an 8’6″ rod would be. At my typical fishing distances, I could hardly miss a casting target with this one. 15-40 feet is where I typically fish for panfish and stream trout – so this performance is what I really look for in a rod. I rarely need to boom out a 60+ foot cast. I’ve found that with the original combination – with that Fairplay fly line, I could hit the 50′ mark pretty easily, though much past that was a struggle with the 4 weight line. Lets face it though – the 4 weight is a light line, and never really intended for long distance fishing. This rod will cast just a leader as well as it does 30+ feet of line.
Wanting to push this rod and see what it would really do though, I set it up with a Scientific Anglers Air Cel shortened 6 weight WF floating line – the line is 53 feet long. I use a 2′ braided leader butt, and a 9 foot leader with this line. Using the 4 weight Wind River and the 6 weight line, I cast sizes 10 to 2 deer hair bass bugs 30-40 feet while wet wading. The bigger bugs took a bit more effort, but I did it.
Not pleased with the Fairplay line after some good use, I retired it and purchased another Air Cel line, in 5 weight WF floating flavor, since cash has been tight lately. Eventually when things pick up work wise for me – I’ll replace the Air Cel line with a Scientific Anglers Mastery line – probably a Double Taper #4 or 5. So far the Air Cel 5 has pleased me. I’ve been using it for a few weeks, and I’ve cast smaller deer hair bugs, big bushy dry flies w/ droppers, and some foam and deer hair hopper patterns with it. Most recently I was fishing a dry & dropper setup and took a wonderful 12″ wild cutthroat with it, with the assistance of my 4 month old son (okay, it was mostly moral support while daddy fished, but that’s still helping, right?) – and I could feel every beat of the fish’s tail in the water – which always puts a smile on my face. I think that’s the most important thing about a rod – does it please you to fish with? Does it make you smile when you hook and play a fish with it? Do you enjoy casting it? I can answer in the affirmative for each of those questions.
Aesthetically, the Wind River isn’t bad either. The blank is black, with black thread wraps, and black hardware with a darkly stained rosewood reel seat. That’s a bit too drab for my tastes – I would’ve loved to see some accent wraps, and lighter colored reel seat hardware (I prefer nickle reel seat hardware on most fly rods) – but the rod still doesn’t look bad – just a bit bland. The picture below is a nice comparison of my (well used) Grigg 4 weight and the Wind River 4 weight – the Grigg is the one that has the dirty, fish-mojo covered grip.
As nicely as the Wind River performs, it can look a little bland – consider it a wolf in sheep’s clothing, which is much better than a gorgeous rod that performs like crap.
The 4 piece design is nice from a packing stand point – if space is at a premium (like it was when packing for the camping trip back in June) having a rod that breaks down into sections only 26″ or so inches long is really nice. If space isn’t at such a premium, I can leave the two tip sections and the two butt sections together, and have myself a 2 piece rod. I don’t believe this rod suffers at all from being a multi piece, like some older rod designs did. Chalk one up to modern fly rod design.
It’s no Sage, or Winston, or G. Loomis – but it’s still a damn good rod, and would serve any beginning fisherman, or the fisherman on a budget very well. At $49.99 on sale, or even at the regular price of $99.00, it’s an excellent light line rod – perfectly at home on the panfish pond or the mountain trout stream. I will say though – that the rod really does seem to prefer a 5 weight line over the 4, and it can handle a 6 weight also – which leads me to believe that they intended this rod to be a fast action 4 weight, or it was originally to be a 5 weight, and someone in the marketing department said “we need an entry level 4 weight, right now” and they just changed the line rating (since line ratings can be a bit arbitrary, and at the whim of the designer of a particular blank). One of these days I’ll put this rod to the Common Cents test and see what it really rates out at.
In any case, I’m happy with the rod, and I’ll continue to beat the water to a froth with it until it wears out, I break it, or I break myself.
Since I’m a “winner” (at least in the eBay sense) – I’ve been giving quite a lot of thought to how I’m going to build up my new rods.
The 5 weight blank is supposed to be a dark, iridescent blue similar in color to some of Redington’s blanks. The 3 weight is a dark green color. Both are 11 foot, 4 piece rods.
For the 5 weight, which is described as “fast action” in the auction site’s listing (I’m honestly figuring it’ll be quite a bit softer than “fast” since it’s 11 feet long, or it’s in reality a 6 or maybe even 7 weight blank they’re calling a fast 5, but it supposedly only weighs 2.8 oz, so…) ANYWHO – I was thinking, for the 5 weight, of doing with silver colored uplocking hardware on a rosewood reel seat, a full wells grip, screw in 1″ fighting butt (full wells grips look weird to me, without a fighting butt) and maroon thread wraps with silver highlights. I think I want to use 2 ceramic stripping guides, 9 traditional snakes, and an oversized tip-top loop. Not sure if I want to go with a folding hook keeper, or a traditional double foot style. I’m also not decided on the addition or lack of a winding check in front of the cork.
I’ve also been mentally masturbating to which reel and line will be matched up with this rod (and the other one, naturally.) I’ve seriously been gravitating to spending some extra coin over what I’d normally opt for on a trout rod, and go with something like the G. Loomis Venture or maybe even grab another Ross, or maybe go with a Pfleuger Trion. I like all of those reels. Then again, being a trout rod – I could save cash and go with another Okuma Sierra, or a Cortland CDM, or one of Cabela’s metal framed (pardon my French, but fuck their polymer abortions) reels. I’d even go for a Pfleuger Medalist if I could find one (none of the fly shops sell them anymore, none of the big box stores sell them, Cabela’s doesn’t list the 1500 series (the ones with the exposed spool rim) – just the old school 1400 series reels. I really like the styling on the Loomis Venture – so that’s the direction I’m seriously leaning on this one. At $100 it’s a bit more than I would typically spend for a trout reel, but it just might be worth it for this new rod.
After I get the reel dilema figured out – I’ll have to put something on the reel. The Scientific Anglers Mastery lines have been my favorites for a long time – so I’ll probably go that route – but I’m torn – do I opt for a double taper or a weight forward? The WF would boom the standard casts out – but the DT would roll cast easier, especially at longer distances. Either line I get, I’m probably going to pick up one of the Cortland mini sinking heads that loops on to make a floating line into a sink-tip line – or maybe get a spare spool and get one of the Cortland Clear Camo intermediate lines – we’ll see I guess.
For the 3 weight rod, I was thinking of going with a cork reel seat – something with dark brown hardware would be sweet, but if I can’t get that – probably black hardware on that one – mated with a western (reversed half wells) grip. I was thinking a similar guide arrangement as the 5 weight. For thread wraps I was thinking either dark green w/ gold highlight, or maybe dark blue and gold.
Reel choice for this rod is also going to be fun – until the Czech nymphing craze came about – finding a 3 weight much over 8 feet long as been rare, so finding a reel to balance a long 3 weight, without being too big should be interesting. I could always go with a 4/5 size reel I guess, and add a half million yards of backing… I think I’ll try my Fly Water on it and see how well it balances first – if it works well, I’ll probably mate them up semi permanently, and get a new reel for my lovely little Grigg 8 footer. Decisions, decisions!
There is, of course, the matter of actually getting some good reference material on wrapping up a good graphite rod. It’s somewhat of a mystery to me how the rod magicians get the thread wraps on so neatly and perfectly, and how they get the reel seats and grips on perfectly without slop. I’ve seen some pretty bad DIY rod builds before, and I do NOT want my rods coming out that way!
Anyone with some experience in the matters of rod building, feel free to chime in! Or if you know of a good blog that has info – feel free to pimp them here!
Looks like I wound up winning that 3 weight blank now too – $13 for an 11′ 4 piece 3 weight blank. That rod would stretch bank to bank on some of the streams I fish! I guess I do have to do more reading on Czech style nymphing – since these long, light rods are all the rage for the technique. Might make a good dapping rod too. I guess I’ll see how the rod performs when I get it built, to see what role it will take in my stable.
Now I’ve got double the duty of figuring out what rod components I want 🙂
Had a great day today with my wife at the lake – weather was a few degrees cooler than yesterday, there weren’t quite as many splash & giggle types out, and it was just nice to get away alone with her.
We got a later start to the day than we’d planned – we were on the water at about noon-thirty. Today was the trial run for my new prototype boat seat – one I’d made with an oak frame and hand woven paracord seat. In the driveway Wednesday night (when I finished work on it) it was steady and comfortable and did fine. Crawling into the boat today, the front cross member snapped like a twig. The seat could handle my weight, when it was evenly distributed. When I made the mistake of focusing all my weight on one point – it snapped. It wasn’t a killer for the day – the way I’d woven the rope, it actually still stayed together. We plugged on, I fished a bit while Kay paddled, then we’d stop and anchor and fish (well, I’d fish – Kay didn’t pick up a rod today, she was just enjoying the sun and the water and the peace).
I started the day tossing a 3″ wacky rigged Yamamoto Senko (red, metal flake) on a 1/0 heavy Mustad live bait hook, with no other weight. Got some good strikes, caught a couple decent sized yellow perch, missed a couple strikes that felt very bass-like – then it happened. I hooked up with a BIG fish – it started immediately taking line, then made a run at and under the boat, bending my poor little Celilo light rod (the 7’6″ – my original, and favorite one of the bunch) into a U shape. I brought the fish to hand and was happy as a pig in a wallow to see it was a largemouth bass about 15 inches long. I asked Kay to dig the camera out and get a shot. “I don’t have it.” She says. “What? You brought it, I saw you pack it.” “It’s in my back pack.” Which was in the car. Half a mile behind us. No fish pix today! Ohwell, I was happy to catch the fish, and just as happily released him. A few more missed strikes, and we continued working the shoreline. I had a destination in mind, and wanted to get there. We did stop a few more times, so I could work some very fishy looking spots. Had a few more bumps, missed fish, and had a fish on that spit the lure. Then we made it to some flooded timber, thick enough I didn’t really feel great about tossing the little senko with only 6lb line. I grabbed my baitcasting setup – the rod Kay’s father had given me – one of the ones that belonged to her brother. I tied on a white and green spinner bait (twin Colorado blades) and began crashing it through the timber and rolling it right above the weed and tree tops. It didn’t take long and BAM – another good fish, this one fought harder – and my smile grew bigger with every head shake. Then it went airborne – and airborne again. It was no use – my spinner bait’s hook was firmly planted in his upper lip. Another fat 15 inch fish, with a deep belly.
I fished the timber some more – without another bump. We paddled on, reaching the creek inlet where I’d ended the previous day – where I’d caught the smallmouth bass, and watched the men in float tubes slay the fish. Not a bump – but I did see a few fish follow (without attacking) my spinner bait. The senko produced zip. No more fish more me today!
We had lunch on the gravel bar there, and began heading back for the car. As we moved from the creek into the lake, I made another cast – only this one with disastrous results. I had hooked my spinning rod with the spinner bait’s giant hook on my back cast, and on the foreward cast, I launched my spin rod into the lake. I said a few choice words, and we got the canoe stopped and started backing up. I could see my rod sinking slowly into the depths. Then miracle of miracles, I saw it settle on the bottom, and realized the bottom wasn’t as far away as I thought. I tried grabbing for it. I managed to further break my seat in the process, and soak my arm to the arm pit -without reaching the rod. Okay, so it was still pretty deep. I reached down with my paddle, and managed to just get it under the rod’s shaft and ease it vertically, and Kay grabbed the tip. Seemed we were in 5 feet or so of water (7’6″ rod, only about 2 feet were sticking up out of the water when I got it up). I would’ve been heart broken had I lost that rod forever. The incident did put a little bit of a damper on my spirits, and made me way more cautious with future casts.
After leaving the creek arm, I stowed my rod and we headed back at full steam.
I retrieved the camera from the car, and snapped a few pictures – so the day wouldn’t be entirely picture-less.
A BIG thanks to Cameron from The Fiberglass Manifesto for the decals he sent. They do look damn good on my rig 🙂
And it prettied-up the canoe also
I wasn’t quite ready to call it a day – so we drove around the lake and did a little hiking, and I did a little fruitless bank fishing. I did find an interesting tree:
With a wood nymph living inside it, which I managed to coax out and capture on (digita)l film:
It was a pretty good day, despite my best efforts to ruin it. Can’t wait to do it again, and I don’t think I’m going to write off Hagg quite yet – I might not be getting pannies anymore, but the bass are getting more active – or at least more willing to eat! Till next time.
Floggin' Water 