Outcast Boats, Best Deals

Outcast Pontoon Boats
Personal Adventure Craft! Twenty one Exciting Models for 2007!

Inflatable pontoon boats, commonly called cata-rafts, cat-boats or simply cats, are more popular than ever.  They give an angler or group of anglers freedom, adaptability and mobility that are unobtainable with rafts or hard boats.  With the right size of cat-boat an angler can be fishing a lake in the morning and a pond in the afternoon.  The next day you might fish an estuary in the morning and a fast flowing river in the afternoon.  With the same craft you might also float a long stretch of river and camp out

Scott O'Donnell and Mike McCune have educated and entertained us at each Sandy River Spey Clave since 2004. Their presentations are always leading-edge because these two guys spend a lot of time on-the-water; fishing.  As professional guides, their annual circuit takes them from the Oregon Coast, to Alaska, to the Grand Rhonde and back to the coast again.  They are with a different set of clients every week...year round.  They see a lot of different acts and they see a lot of different casting

mistakes.  Scott & Mike constantly work
to help improve the casting skills of their clients.  This demands that they are constantly analyzing how every cast is made and how to improve upon it.  Their understanding of Spey casting is constantly evolving and each of their presentations at the Clave has been different.  Their tackle is the configured to work the best under the fishing conditions they encounter on the rivers they fish.  Both of these gentlemen had a huge impact on the development of Rio's

Skagit Lines and were chosen to present Skagit Casting Techniques on Rios' new 3 DVD block buster, Rio's Modern Spey Casting.  When I asked Scott for some promo pictures of  him and Mike with big fish, he relied, "How about little fish.  Little fish are cool too".   This presents a refreshing insight, since there are plenty of pictures of these guys with very large fish.

A transplant to the Pacific Northwest, via the U.S. Navy, Scott O'Donnell settled on the banks of the historically rich, North Fork Stillaguamish River, in Northwestern Washington State. It was there, in 1987, he was first introduced to the spey rod and has been in the thick of the spey casting
revolution ever since. His contributions to spey rod and line design, spey fishing techniques, and his exceptional abilities as a casting instructor has made him one of the most sought after steelhead guides in the West. He is also highly influential member of the Sage and Rio Products Pro Staffs. Scott currently resides in Seaside, Oregon.
 

Mike McCune is a full time fly fishing guide and lives on the Oregon Coast. Born and raised in Northern California, Mike is a life-long Steelhead "junkie" and has fished and guided extensively throughout their native range. A devotee of two-handed methods, Mike is also member of Sage fly rods advisory team Rio products pro staff.

Scott and Mike are a great team and put on a show that is bound to educate and entertain you
and your mom.

Friday we had our second Winter Steelhead School of the year.  The morning air temperature was 28-degrees the water temperature 36-degrees.  It is about a half mile drift from the put -in to the beach where we start our class. By this time we had run three splashy rapids and the entire pontoons on my Steelheader-18 were covered with a quarter inch of ice. Ron, Josh & Brian gave the students a comprehensive casting lesson that covered all of the basics and a lot more.  It was up to me to do the Elementary Sinking-tip-line fishing demonstration.  For the

 heck of it, I chose a rod that I had never cast before that morning (a guy's got to have challenges). The rod was a brand new Sage 7136-4 Z-AXIS. It was rigged with a Ross CLA-5, Rio 450-grain Skagit Shooting head, a 5' Cheater, 15' 9-weight type-8, Guide Line Shooter and a red fly tied on a large silver Loop Bottle Tube. George Cook had prescribed the line which gave me confidence.  I got in about six practice casts while Ron was explaining the timing on a single handed spey cast to the seven students.  It was enough to let me know the outfit had some endearing qualities.  When my turn came, pin-point 75-foot casts were easy and easily repeatable, even though there was a lot of ice in my guides.  Most casts line came tight and straight, and it was easy to show how to cover the water. Adjustments had to be made in timing for the drag of ice in my guides, but that was fairly easily accomplished. That afternoon while the air was above freezing, student Toby Ives and I checked out this same rod. There seem to be two distinct types of spey casters out there; those that want to prove how smart they are by doing the impossible, the those that want an outfit that is super easy to cast with, so we can concentrate on fishing.  Toby and I seem to be from the latter persuasion.  Casting the 7136-4 outfit was easy for both of us.  I don't think that the folks at Sage intended this hunk of high-tech graphite to be huckin' tips and tube flies for winter steelhead, but it is definitely "winter steelhead" capable.  This rod will get a lot of attention from my crew during the next several months.  We will keep you informed.

I asked Scott O’Donnell what he thought of  Sage's new Z-AXIS spey rods. Here is what he wrote:   "The first time I cast a new Z-Axis rod it was a 6126-4 with a Rio 450gr Skagit Line. Within a few casts I knew I had finally found the perfect rod for that line. That was funny to me. I had always been trying to find the perfect line for a rod, not the other way around. Until then I guess I always felt that the Skagit 450 was

just a teensy bit too light or a tad too heavy for most of the rods I’ve put it on (albeit the best choice for many of them). Since then the 6126-4 has become my favorite rod. With an ever increasing number of anglers finding out about the advantages of spey casting on smaller rivers and streams I have little doubt that my sentiments will be contagious.
            The Z-Axis rods are regarded as fast action, but I prefer to think of them as crisp. They’re efficient, super light weight and possess a smooth progressive action that makes my heart sing (yes, I am that far gone). The 6126-4 actually weighs more than a half ounce less than the 6126-3 in spite of the extra ferrule. Just as I was thinking, with all the good rods on the market, that spey rod technology was starting to peak, Sage has raised the bar again."
           Scott O’Donnell