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Nice one Steve! I love those Quickline blanks!

Going back to my roots with these bass poppers. I used to fish for largemouth every day of the summer as a kid, day dreaming about trout streams. I never thought I'd say it, but living in trout country for the past 15 years has really made me sick of fishing for trout! Now I'm driving an hour plus to fish for bass and carp when I have several trout lakes and rivers within a 5 mile drive of my house!

This guy called our shop last week to see if we could help recover his stolen items. Pretty sad that someone would have done this, especially since it belonged to such a good group of people. I doubt these were fisherman that did this, so please keep your eyes peeled for bulk sales of these items! I believe this particular group is based out of Sacramento California. From what I could gather, it sounds like most of the rods had names on them. Here is the link to the news article for those interested: http://fox40.com/2015/11/25/thousands-in-fly-fishing-equipment-stolen-from-wounded-warriors/

I totally agree that the Danvise is an excellent vise for the money. I've tied thousands of flies on mine. Everything from size #26 to 6/0. I sold it this past summer for $30, and "upgraded" to the Montana Mongoose. The jaws on the Danvise were in almost perfect condition after literally thousands of flies tied. I highly recommend watching the Danvise video on how to properly adjust the jaws, because that seems to be a problem for people. Just remember that choosing a vise is 100% personal preference. Some people will love a vise, others won't. Tying on one is really the best way to choose.

Haha, Mike believe me, you don't want to know my price. Put it this way, it would be cheaper to buy the saddle hackle and throw away what you don't use!

The 11 weight handles them with ease. The body tubing makes them look big, but weigh a lot less than most musky flies of the same size.

Thank you! I buy natural grizzly saddle, cut them in half, and dye them myself. It's much cheaper that way, and I can get whatever colors I want.

Another big musky fly. This one is as long as my forearm. 5 piece articulated, with 2 6/0 hooks. All bucktail and Blane Chocklett's body tubing to help flair the bucktail and reduce weight.

Yup, that's the video I followed. The fly works really well, just make sure you use the right materials as getting the tail to float and move perfectly is actually a bit difficult. I also found it necessary to use a tungsten bead behind the hook eye to help balance out better. Definitely use a brass bead on the end of the tail though or it won't move properly. Here's one from yesterday...

I'll be throwing these at the carp tomorrow! McTage's Trouser Worm

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe corsair tubing/ez body etc, are used to make the actual body on flies? The application is completely different with this stuff. You make a cone shape with it that keeps bucktail flaired, and you shouldn't necessarily see it. It's sole purpose is to reduce weight, reduce materials, while keeping the bucktail from matting down. I personally think it's a great idea.

Yes! It's new from Hairline. Its called Magnum Barred Flashabou. Here is the video explaining the body tubing: Chocklett's Body Tubing - YouTube I used an entire pack on 2 flies. I found some much cheaper on Ebay under the name "expandable braided tubing".

I finally got my hands on some of Blane Chockletts body tubing. Pretty cool stuff. It really flairs the bucktail out nicely, and reduces the weight of the fly. Braided expandable tubing is the same thing, and much cheaper.

There is a lake in Nevada that's about 3 hours away from me. I always check the weather, and I don't even go up there if it isn't supposed to be windy. I've never done all that well up there when it's calm. 20-30 MPH in your face a little left to right is perfect! 60-80 is when it starts getting rough! I did get blown off the lake that day... In my area, pretty much every afternoon is windy. Keep your casting to a minimum. I think you're on it with staying away from dry flies. Change your casting plane to cut the wind. I prefer roll casts in general, but it really seems to help when it's windy. If it's really windy mending is a pain, so reach cast instead of mending whenever you can. Good luck!

A very interesting point. Is the distance between the tip of the jaws and the stem really that much larger on the Mongoose than the Renzetti or Peak? For articulated patterns, I just put a rubber band on the trailing hook and wrap that around the rear of the vise to keep it out of the way, but I do not tie patterns as large as 6/0. Are these musky/pike flies? Not much of a difference at all in the distance from the stem to the jaws. All 3 vises are sufficient in that respect. The adjustable material clip is what really make a difference on the mongoose. You can move it anywhere it needs to be, put the trailing hook in the spring and you're good to go. Yesr, musky flies.

Couple of carp flies..

I just picked this vise up last week, and I am pretty impressed! It is a very well thought out design! The Mongoose comes with a carrying case, C-clamp, pedestal base, and a few tools. Due to the unique design (the offset stem threw me off), I had to actually read the instructions to put the vise together. Now, the reason I settled on the Mongoose was pretty much soley because of the completely adjustable material clip. Tying large articulated flies on my other true rotary vises (Danvise, Renzetti, Peak) are totally possible, but having a 6/0 hook flopping around gets annoying, and sometimes bloody. The Mongoose's material clip can be moved to hold a trailing hook at any length that I've tried. It holds strong too while I rotate the vise. I custom built my fly tying bench years ago to accomidate the vises I had at the time. The threaded part of the Mongoose's c-clamp was about 1/2 of an inch longer than the c-clamps on my other vises so I had to hang it off the edge of the table... I ended up putting a 3/8 inch hole in the bench to put the stem of the vise directly into, and just omit the c-clamp all together. The stem fits tightly, and won't budge unless I put some power behind it. Perfect for now... Overall, I am very happy with the new vise! For the most part, I'm not tying flies better or faster, but the vise really is a joy to use! Don't overlook this one, especially if you plan on tying big flies at some point.

Sorry Steve, I should have been more clear. As a dealer we sign a MAP contract with these companies promising that we won't sell their products below MSRP. They will drop us if we do since it is devaluing their products, and putting the smaller shops out of business since they often can't afford to offer such deep discounts as the big guy's can. Some companies won't even let us include a free fly line with purchase of a high dollar item! Go figure! If no MAP contract was signed, it's completely ethical. For a dealer though who signed a contract, not so much.

Huh, I don't know which program you're on where you can only get 2/year... Sounds like their pro-form policy. I did find that email from Sage, and I'll forward it to you. As a dealer you cannot discount the price of the completed rod below 15% of the factory rod. So that's one of the main reason's my pricing is where it's at. In my opinion, it is also a bit unethical from a business standpoint to undercut the MSRP set by a company, which is why these MAP policies need to exist in the first place. In my case it would also take money out of the pocket of the owner of the shop since he takes 25% from one of my rods, but 50-60% on a factory rod. I know your situation is different, and I wish I could offer pricing like you do.

Steve, I have an account with Sage and I have built quite a few rods on their blanks, mostly One's. I sell them out of my shop along with several other rods in different price ranges. Since they are next to factory Sage Ones, I put my price up to $999.95, and they still sell (not as often as the others though). People are paying for the name at that point. Mine look a heck of a lot nicer than a factory Sage One. I usually do thread weaves, custom cork work, and I always use Recoil guides to reduce weight. One of my favorite things to do is have a customer hold my rod next to a factory Sage One, and they instantly notice it's lighter in hand. I do remember getting an email a while back from Farbank (Sage, Redington, Rio) about them sometime this year putting a cap on how low you can offer custom built rods on their blanks. I think it was like 15% or something below the MSRP of a factory rod? I'll forward you the email if I can find it. Might be something to think about as well. I know there is at least one guy on Ebay selling Sage Ones for your price of $575, so either the price cap didn't go through yet, or they just aren't enforcing it.

I stopped using chenille years ago. My bugs tied with a dubbing loop instead of chenille seem to work better for me.

Yeah, I've built a few of those IM6 7 pieces as well. I've done the camo 8' 3 weight, and the 9' 5 weight. I agree, these ones from Brian are much lighter/faster! I think I've built somewhere around 20 of the IM8 ones this summer alone. I live near the Pacific Crest Trail, so pack rods are in really high demand. I had a bunch of 16" brushed aluminum rod tubes made up for these too.

Nice work Steve! These 7pc blanks from Brian are awesome! I actually talked him into getting these rolled up last summer! They are perfect little backpacking rods, I'm sure your customers will be very happy with them.

Hey thanks for the kind words guys! It makes all of the hard work worth it!

**Double Post**