Photography

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Sometimes your home water surprises you with a late breaking curve ball.

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Sometimes your Home Water surprises you with a late breaking curve ball.

Last weekend I snuck away for the quintessential October evening of fishing. Everything was just right.

The Great Miami River was low and clear, a rarity I cherish. The air was cool and dry. The sun was setting. The breeze was moving enough to rustle the drying yellow leaves but not blowing enough to warrant a wind breaker. It was one of those days.

The fishing was understandably slow due to the low and gin clear conditions. The water was also unseasonably cool which  made the smallmouth a little more hesitant. So I wasn’t expecting to knock anything out of the park, a nice single into right field would be fine.

I waded to some known sections and felt not a nibble.

I noticed that one particular pool, one usually fairly difficult to access because of swift currents and wading obstacles, was fishable.

Some teenagers had just finished wading through it in blue jeans. There were four of them, two guys and two girls. The one couple waded through piggy back style, the guy acting as horse. The other couple waded separately. The young girl opting for the ankle deep riffle below the bridge run. Her blue jeans darkened in the water and she sreiked and giggle as she slowly made her way across. When they re-united onshore there was some hugging and horse play under the bridge. Then they left and headed for home, across the bridge.

As they were watching me cast and walking back across the bridge a fish hit my little black wooly bugger. They watched as I hand lined it in and pointed at me from the bridge. No doubt saying something along the lines of , “oh look he got one.”

It was an average fish. I snapped a couple photos and let it slip back into the current seam.

I fished on to no avail but plenty of enjoyment at just being there on an October evening, enjoying the weather.

I got home transferred the pics from my camera over to my computer and  was shocked! That was not an average SMALLMOUTH! It was a Largemouth, from a spot that shouldn’t have ANY Largemouth in it. Fast current cold water temps — not what you would think of as typical Largemouth territory, but there it was, a beautiful little Largemouth.

It was the perfect  late breaking curve ball that I hit into right field for a single on an October afternoon.

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Proving Grounds Playground Earth – a SmithFly Cameo in an amazing web-i-sode adventure series.

At the risk of you all thinking I’m becoming a Gink Whore (which of course I am) I’m posting another link to the inimitable Gink and Gasoline today.

At min 1:57 you’ll see Louis rocking the Digi-Pouch on the Owyhee river. See I’m not making this stuff up, and neither are they.

They were sponsored by one of the “big guys” in the industry and had the pick of the litter when it comes to top notch gear packs bags etc. But what was he using on this adventure — his SmithFly Dii-Pouch. Word.

The other main point that I think this series “OFFICIALLY” marks is the addition of fly fishing into the pantheon of adventure sports. Its been a long time coming but fly fishing is no longer viewed by the outside world as boring, or old fashioned, or stuffy, stodgy, uninteresting, or elitest. It’s becoming viewed as fun, fast, thrilling, breathtaking, adventurous, action packed, dramatic, inspiring, heady, and every bit as lunatic fringe sport as every other X Games event. Not that I think this “legitimizes” the sport of fly fishing or ads anything of value, just that the perception of the sport from the outside uniformed observer’s perspective is shifting, which is cool.

Oh, and we sent a Digi-Pouch over to the UK to carry a DSLR to the South Pole as well, on foot. Check out the Scott Expedition, and Studio Canoe for more info.

So yeah, later this year a SmithFly Digi-Pouch will be standing at the South Pole, so that’s cool.

 

 

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A Deliberate Life

As a small start up company SmithFly doesn’t get the opportunity to really “support” much of anything. So when Matt Smythe aka fishingpoet and founding member of Silo4 approached me about helping out with a film project they were working on, there was an easy answer, “Hell’s yeah.”

It helped that the very premise of the work is exactly the same point of origin that compelled me to put needle to fabric and start making some stuff.

To live deliberately.

This is just some truly spectacular work going into this and I’m honored to be mentioned in there along with some other great brands providing support.

 

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The new SmithFly Digi Pouch, get ’em while they last!

A Digi Pouch Mounted to the SmithFly Switch Belt, boom, ultra dry, ultra comfy, way to carry a ton of other stuff on waist, damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

We just launched a first of it’s kind MOLLE webbed roll Top Dry Bag for a DSLR! BOOM! See this link to pre-order yours today, this limited run might not last long.

Constructed of heavy duty  welded 18 oz vinyl the Digi Pouch is a first of it’s kind roll top dry bag that attaches to MOLLE webbing. Working with a top USA based Dry bag manufacturer we developed a unique way incorporate our MOLLE webs onto a welded patch in the back of the bag, leaving it water tight. That means that this little ditty will attach to anything and everything without re-stringing your webs. It also attaches to all of our backbones like the Switch Belt or Switch Bag or any other MOLLE webbed thing out there, and there’s a bunch.

The snaps on the webs allow it to attach to belts that don’t unthread from their pads, like those on big alpine/ hiking style backpacks etc. So if you want to carry a DSLR on a the waist belt of a big Gregory Palidsade you can do that without detaching and unthreading all that webbing on the belt or the cynch straps. See now this thing works with a LOT of other stuff.

It’s one of those things that we’ve wanted for a long time now, because we carry big DSLRs with us very frequently and in places that get pretty nasty and wet.

So for all you photo geeks who like to pack lenses and big Digi cam into the wilderness, now you can have it mounted securely to you pack in a dry place.

Our vendor is kind enough to work with us on a small trial run of 100 pieces.

We DO NOT have them in inventory yet, but you can pre-order and reserve yours in the initial run today. We don’t know if the demand will be high enough to continue these in the future.

We should have these in hands for ordering in 6-8 weeks.

Pre-order and Reserve yours today, this first run will go quick.

 

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Sunset on the Great Miami River

Sunset on the Great Miami River

So I was flipping through some old photos on my camera and found this one. I’d forgotten about it, and man it’s a good one. Thought I would share. It almost looks fake, but I didn’t even do much in terms of adjusting in the raw settings, it’s pretty much, straight just as shot.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that scenes like these take place every day around the world. You just need to be there to witness them.

The white fly hatch has supposedly started. It starts right about when this pic was taken. That means good dry fly action for smallmouth. It’s a lot of fun this time of year, too much fishing to do, too little time.

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Cool interview with Val Atkinson

After watching a few episodes of Pirates of the Flats, I’ve been wondering about Val Atkinson. Everybody else on the show is as close to a household name as you can get with the exception of the Bonefish and Trapon Trust guys.Turns out Val is a graduate of CCAD. Once upon a time I seriously considered attending CCAD and many of my friends did, but I thought the eduction of OSU was a bit more well rounded and in the event I decided to do something else, like architecture, I could have an out. The thing about an all art school is if you decide you don’t want to do art, you have to go somewhere else. Now I work with quite a few CCAD grads.

Midcurrent has a cool interview with Val this week. Where he says this…

Val: When I first started shooting fly fishing there were maybe only four or five other guys doing the same thing. We mostly shot black & white and because I had taken Ansel Adams classes and had my own darkroom and could make the blacks black and the whites white, they’d never seen that kind of quality before and they would buy everything. It was absolutely terrific.

I’m a true believer in the value of actual darkroom experience. Having done it the hard way years ago I can attest to its ability to give you a solid foundation when it comes using the new technology. It gives you a good frame of reference for detail in the light lights and dark darks and the subtle differences that it takes to maintain them in a photo. Good interview, and who knew that a guy on Pirates of Flats was an Alum of CCAD.