Archive for September, 2008
Sep
28
Posted under
fly fishing news by Will Benson
Dave and I just returned from Colorado where we were attending the Fly Fishing Retailers Convention and showing our new film Connected at the Drake Magazine Video Awards. We were waiting for the awards night to finally unveil our newest creation on the internet. If you haven’t already seen it you can go to www.worldangling.com and watch it on the home page or even download it on itunes to watch whenever you want. If you fished with me this past year chances are you, or at least your fish, made the cut. Check it out.
The night of the Video Awards was awesome! Everybody was really cool and really pumped to see all the films. The show was amazing as the quality of this year’s submissions were raised significantly! Dave and I were lucky enough to take home the Best Fishing Video Award for a second year in a row! All of the other film makers were really cool and it was great to meet them. I am really excited for the sport of fly fishing and the new trend that seems to be growing from the younger ranks. I cannot thank Tom Bie, editor of the Drake, enough for his efforts to bring all this together. I think the consensus is clear that this is what the sport needs. If more people are getting excited about fly fishing that’s a good thing. Looking to the future, World ANGLING has a lot planned this year. Peter Smith at www.ssflies.com will be releasing some great new patterns that we have been working on. And we will be collaborating with Vaughn Cochran www.vaughncochranart.com on a multidimensional piece for next years Drake Awards. Thank you all for your interest and support. We look forward to stepping up our production and keeping the footage coming!
Sep
15
Posted under
fly fishing news by Will Benson
First off, let me begin by thanking Tom Bie for putting on a terrific show at a colorful venue. I was reminded of my college days in New Orleans when we first stepped into Cervantes Ball Room, which is more like a bar room with a big disco ball in the center. Awesome spot considering the underground nature of all things Drake! Beer was being thrown around, guys and girls were talking fishing and everybody was wondering what all the usual suspects had in store for the crowd. Of course, the show started late. Thankfully the Tom was able to quell the masses by giving away free beer and pizza until all the technical issues were sorted out and the lights dimmed. Then….pure fishing porn! Lots of trout, and salmon, a few bonefish “action rod-set ” hookups from some dudes down-under, 1 carp, BASS, one enormous Louisiana redfish caught with Capt. Brian Carter, Frank Smethurst and a helicopter, a couple of tarpon and of course Dave’s last PERMIT! All in all, the bar was raised significantly. WorldANGLING was very warmly received with cheers and laughter. Congrats to all the film makers for their incredible effort in putting these films together for the hungry fly fishing mob that call itself Drake. The winners were Roll Cast Productions for best conservation piece, RA Beattie, for best humor, WorldANGLING for best fishing, and Felt Soul for best story line and best overall!
Sep
12
Posted under
fly fishing reports by Will Benson
Although he was out of power for nearly five days, caught between the mess of one hurricane and unsure about the next, Capt Greg Arnold is back at it. “Will,” he said. “The marina ain’t there no more. Launch ramp is fine, but all those houses and sheds…they’re gone. Not to mention, one of those big rigs from out in the gulf that has sunk in the middle of MRGO. All you can see are the offices at the top!”
I could picture it in my head as Greg just kept telling me about what he’s seen down on the bayou. A lot of the same area that was hit hard by Katrina took another blow in Gustav. With a surge of about 12 feet, the roads were covered with mud and mostly impassable down to where you could put a boat in the water. After 4 days Greg was able to get out and get a closer look at some of the damage in his skiff before heading out to check on the redfish.
“It appears that the oyster boats themselves are mostly intact just the dock operations for the commercial fisherman are gone. I suspect that the damage is significantly worse over in Grand Isle and back towards Cocodrie and Houma. I haven’t been to look though.” Greg said. He also described how obviously he was lucky this time, as the levees in New Orleans held, and the city should reopen for tourism soon. The fishing hasn’t been outrageous but Greg said it was getting better and may get really good as soon as the weather settles down. It looks like New Orleans has dodged another bullet with hurricane Ike, but the boys on the Texas Coast might not be so lucky. We can only hope that the storm damage is minimal and that these hurricanes don’t continue to come at us every week! Down in the Keys we certainly feel lucky to have dodged the bullet on Ike. The water in the Keys right now is very murky as a result of the continued tropical storm activity. I am glad to be heading out to Colorado for the Fly Fishing Retailers Convention this weekend to promote Connected instead of trying to find fish in this pea soup.
Sep
11
Posted under
fly fishing news by Will Benson
Gary Ellis and the Crew of ESPN outdoors were forced to cancel the 2-day flats fishing event earlier this month as Hurricane Ike threatened the Florida Keys. ESPN officially announced its partnership with Redbone.org for the launch of the new ESPN Outdoors Saltwater Series at the ICAST show in Las Vegas in July. The SLAM event will debut the 2009 television series. The SLAM and at least five other Redbone-sponsored events will be featured on ESPN2, and the series will also appear on other multimedia platforms including a new annual magazine.
Gary called me this morning and let me know that the makeup dates are the weekend of October 18-19. He encouraged me to let people know if they are interested in fishing in the event they could contact Redbone at 305-664-2002. The SLAM is a spin and fly tournament that targets Tarpon, Bonefish and Permit. The Tournament is convened at the Conch Farm, and hosted by the Westin on the waterfront in Key West. An opportunity for the anglers is that many very good guides are open for the event, as their regular anglers are unable to attend. And for the guides, this is a great opportunity to contribute to the cause of Redbone as well as the coverage by ESPN. Hope to see you there.
Sep
10
Posted under
fly fishing media by Will Benson
Another awesome season for the books.
Matt Jones is a traveling guide/photographer who just came back from guiding in Alaska for the summer. As he put away the fly rods for the fall and began to upload the next batch of fishing photos to his website www.mcjphotography.com , he sat down and contributed this report about his experiences this summer.
The fishing and weather this summer up in Unalakleet, Alaska was sweet. The Unalakleet River is located 400 miles NW of Anchorage and drains into the Norton Sound. Our river hosts King Salmon, Silver Salmon, Chum Salmon, Pink Salmon, Dolly Varden, and Arctic Grayling. Our largest runs are Pinks at 5 million strong, and Silvers at 500,000 strong. As most of you know, the salmon are not feeding once they hit freshwater so they hit flies out of aggression. Pink is always a popular color along with any other brightly colored fly. The majority of our Dollies were caught on various colored beads or glow bugs, and they would occasionally take a salmon fly. Arctic Grayling aren’t picky and pretty much attacked anything thrown in front of them, from beads to dry flies. With all of the rainless sunny days we had, the river continued to get lower and lower. In certain parts of the river we were running our boats through less than 6″ of water! Using jet engines of course! The lower water not only forced the fish to hold in different spots, but allowed for some really exciting sight fishing! The most exciting catch of this summer was by guide, Lee Dooley with a Dolly at 26″x14″ which we estimated to be around 8lbs and set a new lodge record. Most of the time the weather was nice allowing me to keep the photography gear out all day, and I ended up with some pretty cool shots. All in all, the summer was great as I look back at yet another ideal time getting paid to do what I love…Fly fishing and photography.
