Cameron Mortenson, who (there’s no accounting for tastes) actually likes fiberglass fly rods, has a posting (with a slideshow of photos) on the late Robert Traver (John D. Voelker)’s camp at Frenchman’s Pond in winter.

He quotes Voelker, describing a childhood visit in winter to the camp:

I went along on a few of those outings as a kid, and usually wound up skiing around outside while the laughter echoed out of the cabin. I would busy myself by looking at the pond and surrounding woods. Even in the dead of winter the pond would never freeze completely over. Open spots would reveal where a spring bubbled up from below. I would mark those spots in my mind and revisit them on the hot days of late summer. There I would throw hopper patterns with my 8’glass Fenwick six weight that my Grandfather bought me at the local sporting goods store. On occasion, I would be rewarded for my craftiness and provoke a swirl from a large Brookie that had claimed the spot to fin in the cool water.”

Hat tip to Brad Reiter.

Via a bamboo fly rod list:

T’WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CADDIS
BY
RICHARD FRANK

He then mounted his sled and he flew out of sight
Shouting, “Merry Caddis to trout and to all a good night!”

Hat tip to Wilmer Price.

New 53 minute video with Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, Russell Chatham, and the late Richard Brautigan. Music by Jimmy Buffet.

Guy de la Vadene was one of the film makers.

Tip from Steve Bodio.

Wife Gerri Carlos wraps a fly rod, as semi-recumbent Morgan looks on through special glasses

Forbes describes how Tom Morgan has managed to overcome MS to continue to produce state-of-the-art custom fly rods.

In his case, the “thought rod” metaphor takes on another meaning. Considered by many to be the world’s finest living fly-rod-maker–a craft that relies almost solely on feel–the 67-year-old Morgan has not been able to cast, or even hold, one of his creations for more than a decade.

Morgan has multiple sclerosis, a still mystifying degenerative disease that occurs when a mix-up in nerve signal transmissions causes the immune system to attack the insulating sheaths around the nerves. Morgan has a particularly debilitating form of MS and has extremely limited movement below his neck. He is confined to his bed and to a high-tech wheelchair with a headrest, a reclining contraption that resembles a dental examination chair. Morgan’s thought rods are a pure extension of his mind.

Read the whole thing.

Tom Morgan Rodsmiths

The MSM and the blogosphere has moved on from unimportant subjects like Islamic terrorism and the upcoming presidential election to what really matters: Is that really a babe reflected in Dick Cheney’s fishing shades?

McClatchy:

Since Wednesday, the blogosphere has been atwitter over a photograph on the White House Web site of Cheney with a caption that said he was fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.

The photo is a tight shot of Cheney’s face sporting dark sunglasses and his trademark grin.

What’s stirring all the buzz is the reflection in the vice president’s dark glasses. Some thought that the reflection looked like a naked woman and, this being Cheney and this being the Internet Age, they immediately shared that thought with the world.

In a Google search for the words “Dick Cheney” and “sunglasses,” 79,300 hits came back at mid-afternoon on Thursday. By 7 p.m., the count was 130,000.

On DemocraticUnderground.com, the discussion starts with this question: “Notice anything … interesting … reflected in his sunglasses? Something that has little to do with conventional ‘fly-fishing’?”

Photographers discuss.

The news had begun to circulate yesterday that George Maurer, proprietor of Sweetwater Bamboo Flyrods, had died suddenly of a heart attack.

Maurer had been the most renowned rod maker to work in Pennsylvania since the 19th century era of John Krieder and Samuel Phillippe. He built parabolic rods inspired by the tapers of Paul Young, and standard tapers based on the works of Jim Payne and Goodwin Granger.

Maurer was a friend of the angling writers Harry Middleton and John Gierach and built rods named after some of their books. I’ve never owned one myself, but I’ve often heard the model he called the “Old Philosopher,” a 7′ 5″ for 5 wt., singled out for exceptional praise.

Maurer’s shop in recent years was located at a wide place in the road along the rural highway paralleling the Big Pine Creek in North Central Pennsylvania, where cities are far away, and newspapers are few. It will be a while before a full obituary appears.

Len Codella

Trout Underground

great bustard in Beijing zoo

Reintroduced via batches of chicks imported from Russia, the largest Eurasian game bird the Great Bustard, Otis tarda, is being reported to have nested in Britain for the first time, as the London Times puts it, “since Queen Victoria was a child (1832).”

A female bustard has laid two eggs somewhere on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The precise location is not being publicly released in order to foil the hordes of mad-keen British ornithologists (bird watchers) and the now nearly as endangered as the bustards themselves oologists (collectors of birds’ eggs).

Press release with photo

London Times

Telegraph

UK Great Bustard Reintroduction Project

The primary wing feathers of the great Bustard play an important role in the dressing of traditional featherwing Salmon Flies, being featured as ingredients in the wing of many of the most famous patterns.

Jock Scott

The large patterned black-and-orange mottled strip of feather, third from the top in the wing, beneath the Golden Pheasant crest feather and brown mallard, is from the great Bustard.

The Internet offers some very interesting video offerings these days.

Here is a vintage movie short, titled Salar the Leaper, made in 1957 on New Brunswick’s Miramichi River by the illustrious fly-fishing authority Lee Wulff (1905-1991).

Part 1 – 3:43 video (Unfortunately interrupted right in the middle.)

Part 2 – 4:21 video

Field & Stream has an interesting photo essay on the 6 catch-and-release of a large mako shark on a fly rod (8 foot 6 inch rod for a

16 weight line

).

They’ve got so many record salmon in the Restigouche (where they all have to be released), that I place no reliance in any estimated weights or lengths myself.

Frank W. Benson (1862-1951), Salmon Fishing
oil on canvas – 32 by 40 inches

This impressionist oil painting by renowned sporting artist Frank Benson is the highlight of today’s Sporting Sale, today and tomorrow at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel by Copley Fine Art Auctions. The Benson is expected to sell between $600,000 and $900,000.

RESULTS

Sales price was $650,000 + 15% buyer premium = $747,500.00

Guns and Hooks

The Museum of Idaho (in Idaho Falls) will feature an exhibition titled Guns of the West & Rocky Mountain Fly Fishing running from July 14, 2006 to January 27th, 2007.

Over a dozen major collections are represented, illustrating 500 years of firearms history, and the considerably shorter, but still fascinating, history of Western fly fishing.

I’m told there are more than 20 linear feet of antique fly rods on display. Not to be missed.

The Okeechobee News reports that a wading fisherman was bitten last Monday by a ten foot alligator.

Sixty-six-year-old Sam Crutchfield of Fort Pierce was attacked by an alligator while fly fishing on Lake Istokpoga Monday afternoon. The alligator, which is believed to be at least 10 feet long, grabbed Mr. Crutchfield by the hip as he stood in 41-inch deep water.

“I had been wade fishing off the south end of Big Island for over three-and-one-half hours without a bite. Around noon I moved into the deeper water. Suddenly, I was knocked sideways,” said Mr. Crutchfield. “Something locked onto me by the right hip and wouldn’t let go. I started punching him as hard as I could. He finally released me and I took off toward our flats boat. I called to my partner that I had been bitten and he wouldn’t believe me.

“He still wouldn’t believe me until I dropped my shorts and you could see the imprint of its teeth around my hip. My leg is so bruised that it looks like I’ve been hit by a car going 80 miles an hour,” added Mr. Crutchfield, a fifth-generation Floridian.