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. ;-)