High Uintas

A couple of years ago Nick Stoddard and I went on a 3 day Backpacking trip. It was wet, rainy and cold most of the time but that is what you get for going into the High Uintas in September. We hiked a lot and fished a ton. The fishing wasn't great by any means but we sure saw a lot of pretty back country. This picture was taken by Nick. It is an unnamed lake that we really enjoyed. If the wind had died down we would have gotten out the rods but it never happened. Thanks for going with me Nick. We need to get back there earlier in the year for some dry fly action on that meandering stream through the meadow, you know the one I am talking about.

After reading my post and ripping off my picture, Kris did a little edit job. Here are the results. I say mighty fine!

Blog Surfing

I love to surf blogs about fishing. It could be right here in the west or across the ocean in Europe. It doesnt matter what kind of fishing it is, I really enjoy reading about it. I also love art. When fishing and art come together it can be very inspirational. I have several paintings from my grandmother in my office and they offer a little peace and tranquility on hectic days.

The other day I was cruising through a blog and found this blogger. He is an amazing watercolorist and depicts trout in a very real way to me. Here is one of his latest post about his prints and some of the finest water colors of trout I have seen.

Order Your Rare Trout Prints Today!

As a gift to my loyal followers and the many other that stop by on occasion I have decided to offer a special Christmas-Holiday Special.  Okay, you got me, - I also need to raise a little money to support my two hobbies of fly fishing and painting, both of which require frequent purchases.

I have decided to offer these four trout prints, not as individual prints, but as a complete set for the ultra low cost of $65 Total!!!  That's right, That price includes shipping and handling.  If you were to order each print separately then the total cost would be over $100 including shipping. 

   Each 8x10 print comes in it own 11x14 mat and backing board.  All you have to do is take them out of the protective plastic envelope used for shipping and place them in a frame.  Each print will also be individually signed by yours truly.  They make perfect wall hangers for your man-woman cave, vacation cottage (if you are luck enough to have one), or fly tying station.  They will also make great gifts for the anglers in your life.

I have decide to keep these four prints together because as a group these four fish are threatened by stream degradation, introduction of alien species, and other man made problems.  Hopefully by my little effort to paint these beautiful fish, more people might be enlightened into the threats facing many of our favorite fish.  I think every angler should do their part to protect and educate in oder that future generations might be able to fish for the same species we so enjoy going after.

So How Do You Take Advantage Of This Deal Before The Holidays?  First you need to take a look at the top buttons of this page.  Up there you will see the Christmas Deal button.  Click that and you will be redirected to the Deal page.  Simply follow the instructions and make your order.  This deal is only available through December 31, after that the page will be taken down and the price for each print returns to the standard price.

If you like his work support a great artist and drop by his site to leave a comment or purchase a print or two!

Rough Planing

There are hundreds of steps in building a bamboo rod. After splitting the cane into pieces and straightening the strips over heat to take out the bends you need to plane each strip into a small triangle in order to proceed to the next step. Rough planing is a very important step to do carefully so that the rest of the planing process goes smoothly. If you do a poor job here you may have to start the whole process again later on down the road because you will not have a perfect equilateral triangle.This video shows the rough planing of one strip in time lapse. In a normal 2 piece rod with 2 tips you would have to repeat what you see here 18 times. Now you can see why the rod building process is a 40-60 hour job.

Landscapes on Mountain Dew

I hope this inspires you to appreciate Gods creations and spend more time outside really getting to know the blessings of the earth.

Some people are lucky to be alive

This is proof that Darwin was right!

Latest Trip

Over the last few weeks it has been difficult to get out fishing but last Friday it happened. Thank you to Kris for letting me go! I met up with my Uncle Jim and we headed down to a place not to far from home that normally holds 8-11 inch trout. This was not the case for Friday. We got to the stream, rigged up and started down to the water. In the first hole I hooked and landed a 16" Bow and Jim landed another right after me. The next hour was a similar frenzy landing 14-18 inch Bows and Browns. It was nice to spend some time with Jim and it will not be the last time I fish this area this year!

Connect

Confluence Films is at it again. Enjoy!

Somewhere in Idaho

While driving through Idaho during LOTOJA, I snapped a quick picture. We were traveling 45 mph down a dirt road at the time so I am surprised it came out as well as it did.Kris gets all of the credit for the edit!

Tamdem Bikes

Yesterday I hooked up a Trail a Bike to my niner so that Lo and I could ride bikes together. Well, as most of you know he has the bike blood running in his little body and he was very excited. Mom pulled Linc in the trailer and Lo and I took the "Tamdem" bike (as Lo calls it) to Maceys for some Ice Cream for FHE. It was a blast. The best part was while putting Lo to bed, after giving hugs and kisses he says, "I had fun riding the Tamdem with you today Daddy." Perfect ending to the day!

These Guys are Crazy

These guys are crazy but so is the fishing! Enjoy! I know I did.

Nordic Fly Fishing Tales - episode 1 - moose and trout from Rolf Nylinder on Vimeo.

Fishing with Daniel

Since Daniel has moved to SLC, it has been hard to get together and fish. Last Tuesday morning we meet super early and went to Hobble Creek to do some fishing before work. It was a great morning. The fish were biting on dries and droppers and we got a couple of very nice fish to net. Both of us were fishing our bamboo rods. Fishing the bamboo was the best part about the day (aside from being with my brother). There is just something special about fishing with a bamboo rod that connects you more to the fish and allows you to feel the fish better. I don't think I will ever sell my first 2 graphite rods because of the history I have with them, but they wont being seeing as much fishing as they normally do each season.

A nice Brown.Walking upstream to the next hole.Robber fly.

100th post "Logans Rod"

Well I have been meaning to past these pictures for some time. I have had them sitting on my desk top and have just not had the time to do it.

Logan has asked me for a long time to take him fishing. I don't even think that he knew at the time what fishing was but he wanted to go because "Dad is going!" I wanted to be able to give him a rod that he could cast and would be able to fish for the rest of his life as well as pass down to his own children. Well I got to looking at rod tapers and components and decided that a 1 piece rod would fit the bill nicely. There are no 1 piece rod tapers as short as I wanted so I ended up tinkering with the numbers on a 2 piece rod and making my own design. Here are the particulars:

Rod taken from a 4'4" Payne Banty rod design.
Now a 1 piece 4'4"
Blonde cane
Cottonwood bark grip collected from the Provo River
Spanish cedar reel seat with Nickel Silver hardware
The Wraps are purple tipped in black. I asked Lo what color he wanted on his rod and over a 1 month period consistently answered "Purple and black."

Lo can handle his rod just fine. He gets a little crazy with it but that's OK. When he caught his first fish (cutthroat) he didn't like it too much because the fish was too "Wobbly". Now that he has caught some Bluegill on it he likes those just fine because they are not so "Wobbly". Man I am so glad that this kid loves to fish.

Getting some instructional help.

Trying it out on his own.A little more instruction.

Practicing how to reel.

Checking for trees on the backcast.

Dave's Finished Rod

I know, its about time I posted the final product of Dave's rod. Not only did I have a fantastic time building this thing, I think it will fish great! Here are the particulars:

Payne 100 taper
7'6" 4 weight
Blond cane
Tiger Maple slide band reel seat
Reverse half wells cork grip
Red agate stripping guide
Chrome Snake guides
Cardinal silk thread tipped with Lemon yellow

I had such a fun time making this rod and fell in love with it so much that I almost wanted to keep it for myself. The only problem with that is that I had Dave's initials engraved into the butt cap. No chance of me stealing it with that kind of ownership on it!

Some pictures that really don't do it justice.This is the rod case that Kris made for it. She is good!

Nate Dog

I was looking through some old files and found this. This is Nate, my best friend, when we were in college. I was borrowing a digital camera for a class I was taking and woke him up early one morning... he wasn't happy. I miss you man!

A series of short films on Guides

I saw this a couple months ago and have been meaning to post them. It is a really interesting look at the life of a fly fishing guide. I will post the first video and then post a link so you can watch the rest. There are seven videos. Have fun watching and dreaming of your dream job as a guide!

"The Take" Episode 1: Origins from Costa Sunglasses on Vimeo.

Here is the link to the rest of the videos.

The Bowl

A number of years ago (in High School maybe around the summer of 1996) we went to Los Alamos with Dave, Katy, Mark and Dee. I remember it being a really fun trip in many ways. We got to rollerblade a lot, play at the park, explore and just relax. Of all the fun things that we did, I remember one the most. One day we went to a sculpture gallery with my dad and uncle Lawry. The sculptures were pretty cool but on the same property there was a little glass blowing shop. We wandered in and as we sat down to watch, we saw him put on the the liquid glass on the end of a long pipe. We watched him shape, blow, shape, blow and manipulate the glass over and over. Once the glass was in a fairly large ball about the size of a baseball he rolled it in shards of metal. As he did this he explained that the metal will turn a certain color when heated and rolled with the glass. I don't know how much time passed but it was probably close to an hour. All of us sat patiently waiting for the next step and everyone was entranced by his skill. We were amazed at the bowl that he made right in front of us. I seem to remember being surprised as my Dad asked the lady at the counter if we could buy the bowl. She said we could so he paid for the bowl and had it shipped home once it was cooled.

There are many people in this world that have amazing talents. Some of them we don't get to see because we look at the trip as a boring escapade to a sculpture gallery. If we take the opportunity to look beyond what we may think is mundane we may actually find something that really surprises us and gives us a little insight into something new.

Thank you Dad, for taking us there and showing/teaching us about real ART. Here are a few pictures of the bowl from New Mexico.By the way, just so everyone knows, my name is on the sticker on the bottom, not Daniels. ;-)

White Elephant

There is a store in Spokane called White Elephant. It is probably my favorite sporting goods store, no my favorite store, in the world! Here is a video of Logan riding the elephant out front last summer while we were visiting. I think you can tell that White Elephant is his favorite store as well.

Trip to California

Here are a couple pictures I took while on business in California.
Passed by the LA temple on the way to meet with Beverly Hills School District. This shot was from the sunroof as we drove by.I took this on Manhattan Beach between meetings with a couple of different districts. Don't get me wrong, we only spent 15 minutes there so it wasn't like we were sun bathing.

A Magazine Cover I played with a Few Years Ago

A few years ago I wanted to put myself on the cover of a fly fishing magazine. I had a lot of fun with it and included my Grandpa on the cover as well. Here is the result.I am not a photoshop person but I was pleased with how it turned out. Maybe someday I really will make the cover of a magazine. It probably wont be for my ability to fish. It may be more of "Here is an example of what not to do" article.