Bird's Eye View

Simms SunGloves

Maximum sun protection for your hands.

Bomber Salmon and Steelhead Flies

 I  know this seems hard to believe but the best piece of equipment I  added to my fishing kit this season is a Simms vest towel..... I thought it  was a little cheesy but once I started using it I never left camp without it. Did I mention the snap loop so you can hang it from you waders  suspenders. If your day is successful, you wind up with fish slime on your hands and need to wash  them in the river.  It's easy to dry with your conveniently  located Simms towel. Maybe you want to take some  pictures.  It's easier with dry hands. You can clean the camera lens with the micro fiber towel.  If it's  raining you don't want to put your camera away wet.  With the Simms towel you can dry your camera off easily.  Don't forget that this towel is micro fiber so it dries incredibly fast.  Josh Linn

Simms Aquis Boat Towel Super absorbent and fast-drying - great for fishing use.

According to the Lowrance instrumentation on the dash board, last Tuesday afternoon, the river was 68.9 degrees as the sunlight went left the water. We hadn't touched a fish in two sessions; not much basis for optimism. Patty chose a stretch of river a couple of hundred yards downstream from the boat.  I started at the boat, where the river bank was a steep drop-off into chest deep water and the tree-line bordering the river left very little room for a back cast or D-loop, not an easy place to try a brand new fly line.  My weapon of choice was a Sage 7136-4

Z-AXIS with a Ross CLA reel and a Miracle Braid shooting line, Rio AFS 460-grain head and 10' floating PolyLeader.  Four feet of 10-pound test Maxima and a Fly du Jour completed the terminal end.  My fourth cast brought the hard pull from a nice little A-run steelhead which was landed in a few minutes.  Two more steelhead were landed with this outfit, one more that evening and one the next morning.  Was the new line instrumental in changing my luck?...probably not, but the whole outfit was very pleasant to use and allowed me to concentrate on my fishing rather than focus on my tackle.  That is what great tackle does for you.  It allows you to not think about it while you are fishing.  George Cook and Eric Nuefeld had spent a day on the Green River casting AFS lines on Sage rods.  They recommended the 400-grain head as the best match for the 7136-4 Z-AXIS rod. These guys know their stuff and we installed a 400-grain on Patty's 7136-4. She fished a morning session with it and it performed well for her. I tried it and it seemed alright.  I didn't get a chance to give it the water-time for a full evaluation. The only other AFS head we had with us at the time was the 460-grain, so I used it and I liked it. Sometimes the progression of fly line design seems to be a spiral or a circle rather than a straight line.  The AFS design is very much like the Royal Wulff Triangle Taper lines we used on the older versions of 7136-4 rods that were available in the 1990's.  Steve Kruse figured out that if you took a Wulff steelhead taper with a 50' head and lopped a few feet off the tip, it made a pretty good line for light spey rods.  We all used triangle tapers as favored Deschutes lines for a few years.  Then Joan Wulff brought out her own fly line design which added a short level section to the rear of the triangle taper.  Once again her lines in the heavier sizes made great lines for small spey rods.  Then Vision came out with the same taper on their Ace lines which are actually made by Cortland and marketed as Scandinavian heads.  AFS is Rio's version of the triangle taper head and a darn good one. Guess we can thank Lee Wulff for the original design. AFS is especially good if you add a PolyLeader, which may be floating or sinking.  This gives AFS great versatility.  Rio is cooking up it's own version of the PolyLeader series which will be called VersiLeaders. Simon Gawesworth sent me a complete set of AFS heads and a complete set of VersiLeaders.  We'll keep you posted.  Mark