I did not get to go fishing today (or, yesterday, as it is now). No, Murphy came round and kicked me in the balls. Repeatedly. With steel toed cowboy boots.
The day didn’t get off to a horrible start – I got the float tube aired up and stuffed in the jeep, with my new 8 weight, and my Okuma Reflexions baitcaster. I hand picked half a dozen pieces of bass hardware, stuffed my bag of soft plastics in one of the tube’s pockets, filled the other with my bass fly box and some leader material. Grabbed waders and fins, and set off for Bass Country (the lake).
Half way to the lake, I realized I had forgotten the cross bar to my float tube, which is the V-style tube. Turned around and headed home to grab it. No biggie, right? Got home, couldn’t find the damn thing. Wasn’t where I’d last remembered seeing it, which for whatever reason was NOT in the same location as the tube itself was. Searched high and low. No bueno. Got frustrated and said ‘screw it’ – threw the Canoe on top of the jeep. Then the jeep died as I was tightening the final ratchet strap down. Damn fuel filter finally plugged up for good. Found that out for sure after getting soaked with gasoline when I popped the filter off.
Borrowed my old man’s car to go to the parts house. $20 later, I have a new fuel filter. By the time I was done with all that crap, it was 3:30 in the afternoon – way past the point of it being worthwhile to make the 30 mile drive one-way to the lake. I was pissed.
Spent the rest of the day looking high and low for that damned cross bar – searched the house, the shop, the attic of the shop, the two metal sheds in the back yard, the wood shed in the back yard – searched the big boat. It’s like that damned thing just up and dematerialized. I can’t find it anywhere – and I was honest to god looking forward to just kicking around and fishing from a floating EZ chair by myself for a change.
I think I pissed the wife off just a bit too, when I told her I’m going fishing tomorrow. She’ll get over it – with the week I’ve had (hell, with the YEAR I’ve been having) – I need a day out, by myself, to just relax and fish at my own pace, without deadlines to be home, without being slowed down by someone else, or having to keep pace with someone. This will be one of the few solo trips I’ve taken this year. I can make it up to her later.
The only really up-beat part of the day – I received the cork and reel seat for one of my rod builds today. I reamed out an inlet into the grip so the reel seat will set recessed, instead of sticking an extra half inch out. I surprised myself by not fucking it up too badly too. Right now I’ve got the whole mess mocked up on a wooden dowel, as I’m still awaiting the actual rod blanks – which annoys me a bit. It’s now been a full week since I won the auctions and made payment (I paid within hours of the auction end for both rods) – and the US Postal Service tracking website is still saying they received notice on the 6th of *intent* to ship – they’re not indicating any actual pickup of the blanks, or any en route info. Both blanks are coming from the same person, with the same tracking number for each blank. The reel seat and grip I bought from another vendor (also from eBay) in Idaho – I purchased those items a couple days after the rod blanks, made payment just as timely, and got those items today, also by USPS. The tracking info provided for the handle parts was accurate and updated from intent to actual shipping to out for delivery.
I sent a letter off to the seller of the blanks to the effect of “WTF” – he assures me the rods were picked up by the mail man on Saturday, and should be in my hands tomorrow. They better be, or I’m gonna be even more pissed. The guy selling these blanks has a massive amount of feedback, everyone saying something like speedy shipping/great service, but I’ve not experienced that at all, nor did I get any communication back from the guy until I sent my WTF email tonight (and I’d sent 3 other emails that went unacknowledged right after I won my auctions.)
Shouldn’t take a week to get some rod blanks from California to Oregon. And yes, I’m an impatient bastard when someone has my money, yet doesn’t get my crap to me quickly. 🙂
A big thanks to the lady from Cabela’s who took the time to dig into my order and call me back to let me know my gear was indeed on it’s way. The reel, line, and cheap leader arrived today – before I went to work, which was way cool.
My initial impressions?
The rod is pretty nice, it’s what I expected from the Three Forks line up. It’s at least as nice in fit and finish as the Lamiglas 8 and 10 wt rods I’ve owned at the same pricepoint, if not a bit nicer. It’s by far the stiffest rod I own, which I could tell during a little get-to-know-each-other session in the parking lot during a slow period at work today. 54 feet was as far as I could regularly cast reasonably well. How do I know this? I measured, using 9′ wide parking spaces as a ruler. I could cast across 6 of those parking spaces and have the line lay out straight, without tailing loops, without cracking the leader, or piling the cast up about 80% of the time. When I try pushing beyond that range – things fall apart. Seems I need to work on my casting stroke more – a trout rod this is not – and while I’ve honed my close-in casting skills, my distance casting has turned to plain ol crap. I don’t blame the rod at all for that – it is what it is, it’s a good rod, with a fine action – it’s just a bit different than all my other rods. I will say that it honestly seems like Cabela’s is telling the truth when they labelled this rod an 8 weight (I’ve noticed a trend with a lot of makers to down-rate a blank, giving you a 6 or 7 weight blank and calling it a 5, for instance, so they can claim to have a really fast 5 weight) – it only takes about 30 feet of line to properly load this rod, though it WILL cast pretty well at ranges as short as 20 feet. Shorter than that, and it doesn’t play nice.
I still might get a 9 weight line to replace the one it came with, but I’ll get to that in a little.
The reel that came with this combo is Cabela’s “Prestige Plus” mid arbor reel. I got the 7/8 weight model, and it seems to balance the rod well. The frame and spool are cast aluminum – not cheap graphite crap. The drag is actually pretty smooth with a good range of settings. In many ways this reel reminds me of a much more refined Cortland CDM – not only do they look similar (the Prestige lacks the sharp edges the CDM comes with) – but the control knob is similar, as is the drag and arbor. It makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe, Cortland isn’t the OEM supplier for this line of reels, or at least might’ve helped with the design specs. I really dig the textured paddle handle on the reel, and it’s QUIET – which I love in a reel. I know it’s heresy, as a lot of guys live to hear their reels “sing”. Personally I hate noisy reels. I don’t even like the muffled “tick tick tick” some reels have. For a disc-drag style reel, I see no point at all in having a clicker, aside from making the noise-loving guys happy. That’s one reason I’m a huge fan of Okuma’s reels – they’re silent! The Sierra, the Helios, and the Integrity reels I owned from them were quiet as a church mouse. Love that.
Getting back to the Cabela’s reel – it seems very sturdy. The frame and reel foot are integral, as are just about every modern reel. It seems that the days of reel feet held in place by a pair of screws is gone with the wind – and I’m all for it. I like simplicity, and it’s got to be stronger, inherently to have it all one piece. The downside is, I guess if you do manage to break the foot off the reel, you’re boned, and you’ve got to buy a new reel (or get it warrantied), instead of just buying a new foot and forging on.
Time will tell how much abuse this reel can handle, and how the drag REALLY works – hopefully I can hook into some steelhead or coho salmon and really put it to the test soon. As it is, the first outing for this combo is going to be the lake, I’m heading there tomorrow with the singular goal of bass hunting. After getting two nice largemouth last week, I’ve got the itch to return and pick another fight with them. The 8 weight should have no problems hucking any flies I’ve got at them, so I’m taking the big ones with me, and I tied a few more up tonight.
The line that came with this combo was a big let down. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given my previous experience with Cabela’s lines. I don’t know who their vendor for such lines is anymore – I believe it used to be Rio – but I do know that the line that came with my combo was on par, quality wise, with the Cortland Fairplay – maybe a tad worse. The line itself, in this case, is a bright green (which I like) weight forward (which I’m alright with, though double tapers are my preferred lines for general fishing use) number 8 floater. It came coiled and secured with two pipe cleaners and stuck into a blank plastic baggie, without identifying the maker or anything else. Thankfully they at least had a little tag that said “this end to backing” so I wouldn’t waste time figuring out which was the running line and which was the working end.
The line was very stiff, held it’s coils stiffly, and was generally a tangled mess. It took me 10 minutes to untangle the night mare, lay it out flat, and get it wound onto the arbor of the reel (and it still wanted to twist together and coil back upon itself, like badly twisted monofilament onto a spinning reel.) I tried stretching the line a bit – maybe it’s just sat coiled up for a long time in some warehouse, I don’t know. So far, I’m not terribly impressed. It certainly isn’t a Scientific Anglers Pro or Mastery series line, nor is it at least a Cortland 333. I’m thinking lower budget Cortland, or South Bend, or Shakespeare line. It’s workable, but it’s no where near the best line I’ve used.
The leader they threw in was likewise unmarked, not even packaged in it’s own plastic baggie – it was tossed in with the backing, loosely coiled together. The packing invoice says it’s a “10 lb bass leader” – it’s a knotless tapered leader, didn’t have a perfection loop tied in the end, and the tippet looks thinner than 10lb test to me – looked more like 7 or 8lb line, but that’s fine. I used it more as a practice leader – as I said I spent a bit of time casting the new get up during some down time at work. I forgot to take along a practice fly, so I wound up snapping and cracking the end of the leader, it’s lost about a foot in length, and really is now a bit closer to typical 10lb test diameter line. I tied up a 7′ bassin’ leader earlier tonight – 30lb tapering down to 12lb, to use for real fishing purposes.
I cleaned the line as best I could when I got home – I didn’t have access to grass or a casting pond, and did my practicing on the asphalt behind a K-Mart store. Needless to say, the line got a bit dirty. I spent about half an hour running it through soapy water and a wet cloth, then another 10 minutes running it through a Rain-X treated paper towel. Got most of the grime off. I’m not horribly concerned with how it effected the line – given it’s a pretty low-rate line to begin with. It’ll work just fine for bassin, and for a few salmon/steelhead trips until I can get a nicer line.
Overall I’m highly pleased so far – the rod is a quality I expected, the reel seems to be solid – and that’s really all I was asking for. Much like the line that came with my first Three Forks rod – I wasn’t expecting a miracle. For the little I paid for this combo – I’m pleased as punch. Now I just have to pop the cherry and get some fish slime on the grip.
Pix of the whole getup shall be coming soon.
When I began formulating this post in my head, I was going to rant about Cabela’s dropping the ball with my order. You see, the rod from the combo I ordered last week arrived today. Just the rod. Package said “1 of 1” on the shipping label. I called Cabela’s and gave them the “what gives” routine. The nice lady who answered my call told me that the second half of my shipment would be delayed, as it was out of stock, and wasn’t slated to be back in stock until August 18th with another 5-10 day turn around time to get to me after that. I was starting to get mad. Their website made no mention of being “out of stock” or “limited supply” or anything, and I had received no mention of this through email or other means – and of course I had only been given one tracking number. I asked if a substitution was available for the missing items – not really wanting to wait until the end of the month or the first of September to get what I’d ordered. She said no, I could cancel the order and buy something else – how do you do that when you buy a package deal? I was pissed – and I was going to come on here and pitch a digital fit about getting mushroomed. (I’d like to point out that this is my first ever such experience with Cabela’s, every other order has always arrived on-time or they’ve kept me apprised.)
Not 5 minutes later, I get a phone call from the lady I spoke to. She was curious as to my order and did some digging. It seems that Cabela’s shipping computers and UPS shipping computers hadn’t been working in perfect harmony – and that indeed *my* items had been shipped – although I hadn’t been given a separate tracking number for the box containing my reel and lines. She told me to expect my additional items tomorrow, and that mine was one of the last orders filled before it went “out of stock.” Yay for me! I hope. We’ll see, I guess, if Brown drops off the other half of my goodies tomorrow.
On a slight tangent, I did open the rod to make sure it was in fact – and it is. A beautiful burned olive colored graphite thunder stick with a comfy full wells grip and rubber tipped fighting butt resting behind polished aluminum reel seat. This will definitely handle some big fish. I just wish I had the reel & line to see how they balance. I’m itching to do some Big-Fish fishing!
None of the blogs I regularly read have quite the same style as Erin’s Mysteries Internal. Erin has a unique writing style – more poetic than most. Erin is a talented writer, living, fishing, and working in Colorado. Her adventures with her dog Banjo and her partner Jay (from Colorado Fly Fishing Reports) are detailed – dotted with childhood memories, inner reflections, and questions we’ve probably all at least thought to ourselves.
Not only is Erin a talented author – she’s a damn good fly tier as well, and her blog has plenty of pictures of her cool creations, and the fish (a number of large ones to boot) they have brought to hand.
You could kill an entire long evening reading and rereading her blog, and not realize it (that’s a good thing) – I’ve done it more than once.
Give Mysteries Internal a look, if you haven’t already.
Floggin' Water 