Hardyhead

I have not seen a traveller that old, but I would assume that it has the delrin style plastic bearing that the rotary arm runs through? If it has that plastic bearing, it should not seize on you, if anything it should get looser over time (we are talking millions of revolutions here for loosening). The only realistic thing that could have happned here is something caught inside. I have a presentation 4000, and had to warranty a part on it, had no trouble with them at all. People's vices are their personal preference, I love my Renzetti, and I would really like the Dyna Kings in feel, but I cannot stand the grooved jaws, so I am going to pass on those. Never tried a Norvise, but I tie on 4/0-6/0 all the time on my presentation, and never had a hook come loose. Good luck fixing your problem, do you have a shop nearby you can take the vise to? My local shop would help with an issue like this, hopefully you have a nearby resource for assistance. Edited to add: I just read through Renzetti's warranty info, the lifetime warranty says the vise will be free of defects from manufacturing and machining, not wear and tear. So if you wore out something on your vice, you are probably out of luck

I find the hareline and wapsi marabou to be consistently too short for my needs, if you are looking for the long stuff, talk to Jack Cook at the Irish Angler, http://www.irishangler.com He has marabou for spey style flies that is gigantic, it's pricey but worth every penny to me considering a lot of the crap I see in the fly shops and at places like Sportsman's Wearhouse these days.

Hehe glad my flies made it, but it looks like I left the tail fibers off one of my flies :hyst: :hyst: :wallbash: , sorry to whoever gets shortchanged :ripped: Next time I will pay closer attention, everybody's flies look great so far :yahoo: :yahoo:

Great shots Graham! Those are some fine fish... On the subjects of the Hardys, did you hear that they are no longer being made in England. I currently have 5 Hardys, and was going to pick up a Cascapedia 7/8/9 for a Berkheimer I am getting, only to discover that they are now made in Korea. Needless to say I am disappointed, it's not that I don't believe that they will still be made well, but the fact that the Lightweights at my local fly shop no longer say 'House of Hardy' and 'Made in England' on them make me kind of mad. Now they just say 'Hardy', with no location on the side. My local guy says he's not going to carry them anymore, and now I am forced to EBay to find a real British one. Frustrating to say the least.

I know what I am tying, just being held up by the atlantic salmon fly that is stuck in my vice awaiting a collar hackle from a feather I don't actually have. As soon as I am done with this one I will crank out my flies. Good to be part of a fun swap.

I fish these on a regular basis, I fish the green, purple, and black kings all in size 1. I also fish the orange heron, sol duc spey, and several purple and orange spey patterns. Flies that also work well for me are the dees, purple deependables, and of course the white winged akroyd. If I am not throwing a two hander, I fish an 8 weight sage vt2, I use a sink tip, usually 10-12 ft long, with a different sink rate depending on flow rate and depth of the river. When choosing a sink tip, I very my tip until I find one that ticks bottom every now and then about 2/3s of the way through the swing. Attached to the sink tip I run 8 or 10 lb tippet, no more than 1 arms length long. The key to fishing these flies is to get them at the right depth, make sure you do the lift mend (described in Dec Hogan's book) to get your sink tip down right at the beginning, and you should be ok. The only real issue with heavy sink tips is often you have to strip a fair amount of line back at the end of the swing to lift it out of the water effectivly. On a sink tip that's 10 ips, that thing is a long way down at the end of the swing, and unless you are he-man, you will be wearing your fly when it's on the extension of the back cast. So I strip it back to about 25 feet, make two to three false casts to aim yourself back at the 45 degree angle and fire your line out, hope you get a good shoot, lift mend and repeat. I am no master at this, but it seems to work for me. Good luck

There are several Steelhead Bee flies out there that work pretty well as skaters, I raised a steelie on Saturday using a deer hair caddis (the pattern from shewey's book) but he missed the fly, and I switched to a small wet right after and was unable to trigger the strike. Skating can be very effective, the spun deer hail flies are great because they are so buoyant in really broken water, and remember they don't have to be all that great to still get strikes, my spun deer hair flies look like garbage, but they fish

I am in, I am a first time swapper (mainly because I never get a signup in time on the swaps I want), but I can handle tying 6 flies for some deserving folks.

Great shot of the blossoms Graham. I did some reading on the shooting with your camera in B&W mode as opposed to shooting in color and converting to black and white. From what I can find, the reason you should shoot in color is because of the make up of the CCD itself. The camera's CCD is actually a matrix of millions of little squares which register different wavelengths of light. When you shoot in color, your CCDs squares pick up their corresponding wavelengths and you get a 'complete' image. If you shoot in B&W mode, your camera actually turns off a bunch of those CCDs, so you actually end up absorbing less information. The estimate I saw was for the Nikon D series 10 megapixel CCDS said that you could lose as much as 20% of your CCDs capacity when shooting in B&W mode as opposed to color. Also of note, the book I was reading said to only shoot in RAW for black and white, since color filters tend to not work as well on digital cameras, you should shoot in RAW and filter the image in color using photoshop (or whatever you use) and then convert it to grayscale. Just a few thoughts.

I shot these on Saturday morning on the Oconto River in Wisconsin. It rained on my for about 2 hours of my fishing time, and when the rain broke the heat rolled in, raising the temperature from about 60 degrees to about 85 degrees in about an hour. The resulting mist was nice, so I nabbed a few shots. I think I was about 15 minutes late, it seemed to have thinned substantially by the time I took the photos. The sky was overcast, one solid shade of grey, not a good day for B&W, but they came out ok. No filters, just straight on my fishing camera the D40X. Enjoy. Ryan

These heron shots are killing me, all I ever see is forbidden spey hackle!!

Well I am glad you like it, always make me nervous when doctoring someone elses photos. I have heard the same as you, shoot in color, then switch to grayscale in photoshop or other photo editing software. I am not sure why this is, but it may have something to do with the image capturing by the camera. It may not be able to effectively capture enough black or white in the spectrum you are looking at, and all photos may have that washed out look. By washed, I mean what happens when you look at a B&W and it is almost all grey. That is what you are trying to avoid. It's hard to do, and some photos simply will not look good in B&W. I like your photo of the round ball thingies. The balls with the highlights and the shadows are a perfect example of a great contrasted shot. The texture shows up great too. I have a few shots that took this weekend of some fog on the river while fishing. I will process them and see if they come out in B&W or not. Either way I will post the results.

Graham- Very nice original as well, I like the tone of the color photo. I converted this in Gimp, and bumped the contrast ever so lightly. Not sure if this is better or worse, but there was no adjustment to the brightness done here. The goal was to make the region in the upper right of the photo your true black. Either way, still a great macro shot, hard to get much better than what you produce.

Great pictures folks. Graham- Your rose is a stunning subject, try bumping the contrast up a little bit. If you look at your original photo, you have no 'true' white, and 'true' black. Crank the contrast up using photoshop or Gimp, just a little bit at a time until you get a true black, and your whites will be whiter, and your gray will have more definition. Your subject, framing, and depth is fantastic, but when I shoot black and whites I always want a true black or a true white in a resulting picture. Some may call this cheating, but it's no different than what you would do underexposing or overexposing a print in the darkroom. Hope you don't mind my input. Matt- Great looking baby and a very pretty picture, keep posting B&Ws folks, I really enjoy them. I will try and get some of mine up, so many photos to process, but so much time needed at the vice :dunno:

Graham- There are so many schools of thought on this that it hard to have a definitive answer, but I find reflections and a bit of glare can be very good in B&W, the key of course is not to have the glare or reflection be overpoweringly white. In the digital world, it can be tricky, you don't really get to choose your true grey. You can do it in a photo editing program, but not in the developing room, where the real magic happens in B&W. I find that when I am photographing scenes without sky, having good contrast between light and dark colors makes the best shot, and that a recent rain, dew, or anything else wet makes the shots even better. When the sky is involved outdoors, you usually need some sort of color filter and possibly the polarizer. Many outdoor shots in B&W have a big washed out sky, cloud cover really helps, not total cover, but something to eliminate the giant band of blue sky (which turns out off white or grey). If you have clouds, you can filter the blue to be dark in the photo, and your clouds will stand out like and really make a great shot. I am very much an amateur, and I would say about 3 or 4 of my shots out of a 24 shot roll are decent, the rest go straight to the trash, it takes a lot of practice to get contrasty scenes. The composition of your photo is the same as in color, shoot what you like, what you think looks good. Just remember a scene with mix of light and dark elements/shadows/reflections will usually look fabulous. Read some of the books about how Ansel Adams shot his scenes, and a surprising amount of his struggles were with filtering sky. The mountains in winter are typically ideal for B&W, the snow combined with the granite leads to an easily contrasted shot, but the dang sky leads to a lot of washouts. So much to learn, so little time

Mokai, your Hazelnut photo is fantastic. The contrast in your shot was amazing, so I decided to B&W it using GIMP. I left the brightness the same, just increased the contrast a little. I hope you don't mind. As a huge black and white fan, and someone who shoots a lot of real film in B&W, it's important to remember that contrast is key, and that photos without sky in them often easily lend themselves to beautiful black and white shots. Anyway, here is your shot, with just a slight bump in the contrast, which is almost not even necessary. Great original, I hope you like the modification. Ryan

Indeed, that is looking in the direction of Middleton from University Bay. I love fishing for the big bucketmouths in the spring at this location, last year our fish averaged 5lbs, hard to argue with that, hook a few of those on a 6 or 7 wt and you are having yourself a dandy day :yahoo:

Ok, well I like this topic, so here goes: I got my photography start while working in a research lab at the University of Minnesota. We were doing experiments on what could be described as a simulated wing flying through the rain. We had a thin film of water moving over a plate in about a 15 mph breeze in a wind tunnel. There were several interesting patterns that developed on the water during the testing, caused by eddies travelling across the plate. Attempting to capture these on film became quite a challenge, we had to photograph the water travelling over a reflective surface through 1" thick plexi-glass. Took a few months to figure out a good way to do it, but we got it eventually, and that is how I learned. During these experiments I spent quite a bit of time in a darkroom with black and white film prints, most turned out to be a mess of glares and blurriness as we worked out a good method for pictures. The thing I love about photography is that often a simple photograph can take your breath away. Many of the landscapes and bird photographs you folks have posted have been very inspiring, even the pictures of flies you folks post are great. When I take a picture of something, it's usually because I myself am moved by what I am photographing. Sometimes, I photograph to capture good times with friends, other times I see something I just cannot resist. I once took a photo of a house with a sign that said 'Free House', parked next to the house was an old run down truck that said 'For Sale $600'. How can you not photograph stuff like that? I love to take pictures outdoors, like Graham, I am forever obsessed with the high sierra mountains. Some of the best days of my life are spent there, hiking, climbing, and fishing. Honestly, if I did not have to work, I would probably live in a shack in the mountains somewhere, and eventually get eaten by a bear When I look at other people's photography, I am often stunned by an images of people, but it's not something I photograph myself. Oddly enough, I often see moments while walking or at some event that I think would look beautiful on film, but most of the time, I don't have a camera. I don't really have a direction or goal for my photography, I am not interested in selling my photos, and consider myself to be quite the amateur, but I enjoy it, and that's what is important to me. Many of my black and whites have become blow-ups on the walls in my home, and a number of others don the walls of my friends. Being a mathematician I have always had a good eye for structure and geometry, as well as the blend between that structure and nature. Often times my photos are a blend of that, and some people really seem to like them. I am still learning my DSLR, it's tricky coming from an old manual SLR. I would really like to get better at using it, so I take photos like mad, fill memory cards, delete pictures, and press onward. Someday I hope to keep more shots than I throw away Great topic. Ryan

Yep Tight Lines is crazy, it's hard to imagine that there inventory is growing, they are redoing their floors this month, and shuffling stuff around to get what? More tying supplies! Between that and their massive selection of Sage and Winston rods, it's hard to imagine a better place to spend your post fishing hours. The fools like me who chase browns and steelhead in the winter stop their when we are too frozen to fish, and drink their free coffee and listen to the yarns :) If any of you are in the area some Saturday afternoon, stop by :)

The Wisconsin flyshop is in DePere, it's a local place, locally owned and run by some very experienced folks. They even do trips with drift boats. Kind of odd for Wisconsin, but they drift boat for smallies. I sent you a PM with the name.

I use a Sage 383 SLT, and while they are very pricey, take a look around, because the SLT series of the Sage rods are being discontinued this year and being replaced by an updated rod. You may be able to get a steal on one. And let me tell you, this may be the best rod I have ever cast. The replacements for the SLT were at our local shop with the rep last week, and they are great rods too, but if you can get a SLT at a discount due to the model lineup change, go for it. Cannot beat the lifetime guarantee, even if your car door 'eats' it. Good luck with whatever you choose, and be sure to cast before you buy.

For 90% of my stuff, I go to the local shop. We have a shop with a HUGE selection of tying supplies, so almost everything I need I get from there. The only thing they don't specifically carry is stuff for classic salmon flies. So for that stuff (winging material, rare birds) I go to John at FeathersMC. For general stuff, I cannot imagine not being able to see it first. Even something as simple as strung saddle hackle, there are good packages and bad packages, all from the same suppliers. The advantage of being able to sort through 10 packages, taking each one out and examining the feathers cannot be overstated. If I had to order everything, I would likely go bananas. With classic salmon supplies, at least I know that if I order from FeathersMC, I will get a quality product, and if John does not have it, he will give me something I can use that's just as good. Still, holding feathers in your hand, inspecting the coarseness of dubbing, examining all the hooks, thread and tinsel first hand cannot be beat. We are lucky because our local fly shop is booming, the ability to cast rods and reels before you buy, trying on waders and boots, shirts and vests, and being able to sit at the vise in the library room and try stuff is simply unbeatable.

This original was B&W, but it was taken with an old Topcon SLR I have. Funny story about the Topcon, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, they had a blind auction on a bunch of old equipment they wanted to get rid of. They had a Chinon SLR, a Topcon SLR, and a really old Leica Rangefinder. My friend wanted the Leica, so he got it for $135, I bid on the Chinon and the Topcon, I got the Topcon for $75 and the Chinon for $25. The cool thing about the Topcon is that it came with 5 lenses, all nice Super Takumar screw mounts, and all of the lenses and the body are stamped with 'PROPERTY OF US SECRET SERVICE'. I will be holding onto that stuff for a while

Thanks for the kind words, sometimes I look at this photo and I think it may benefit from some cropping, seems like there is too much sky. I was pleased that the reflections on the water showed so well, but a bit disappointed in the massive amounts of slime that interrupted the smoothness of the reflections. I wish I would have had my DSLR that day, the resolution on my scanner is a bit low. The real photo is abit nicer, and just a touch brighter than the scanned version. B&W is a lot of fun, but tough to get the right balance of contrast and brightness, often times my B&Ws are a touch washed out. Anyway, keep up the great photos guys, it's very inspiring.

Well, I took this photo before I got my digital SLR, so it's an actual photo that's been digitized. The photo was taken about 35 mins before sunset in Madison, WI on Lake Mendota this spring. I had not processed the film, and considering this photo was shot unfiltered, I think it came out pretty darn good. I only wish I would have had some filters on me. Anyway, I am going fishing this weekend, and have some new toys to play with, so hopefully I will be able to post some good shots. Enjoy!