Dam 7/14 With Friends!

[Prowler]

Yesterday started off on a bad note. I was looking forward to the tallulah competition and was about 30 miles away when I received a phone call from Gatorbyte telling me it had been flooding up there and the comp was going to be called off. I was upset but I am glad he called. I decided to head to the dam so I could at least get some fishing in. It was nice running into Dada and mogogo. I had a blast. Here is a video. Click settings and change it to 720 HD for better quality. (Still loving my camera)

http://youtu.be/rSxbeve6Uo8

[Mackfish]

i live in bulkhead and was hoping to hit the hooch Friday or sat but the mud had me on the couch. After reading these posts I got the motivation to hit the dam. I had good luck but more importantly I got to stand in the river and ponder about how lucky we are to have this river in our city. I have no video or pics but great memories.

[Wet Fly]

Great video, Kevin! I appreciate it. Love seeing the line twitch when a fish takes. I can see that now you have another new toy, too. Can you give us the skinny on that automatic reel, maybe compare it to a regular reel, any pros and cons? Merci beaucoup.

[Prowler]

Thanks Mo! It is actually a semi-automatic reel. It isn't like the old martins. It will pull line each time you pull the trigger and pull as little or as much as you want. If you pull the trigger hard and fast it pulls in alot of line. If you pull it short and slow it pulls in just a little. It is all gears inside no coiled spring like the old models. It kind of reminds me of the old timey sewing machines with the foot pedal. The faster you pedalled the faster it sewed. The drag is a positive inertia drag system that supposedly adjusts depending on the strength of the fish. You can still adjust the drag as tight as you want. Drag seems really solid so far but I need to put it on a big fish before I can truly test it out. The reel is called "Bold" made by a company in spain named thinkfish. They haven't hit the states yet but you should see them in the states soon. They are already available in germany, spain, australia, etc.

There are a bunch of pros in my opinion. If you watch the video closely on a fish that I catch at the big pool, I am drifting and I have too much line out. I barely pulled the trigger and it took up a couple feet of line and got me tight. Shortly after, you can see a fish hit and I caught him. I honestly think I would have missed that take if I had that slack out. It will come in handy big time when you have a huge pig on and he is running straight at you with alot of line out. You can zip the line up on the reel in no time and have a tight connection to the fish. The other huge advantage will come when you are trying to net a big fish. You know when you have a big fish on and you think you have him in far enough to net him and when you stretch out to net him, you need him to be a few feet closer to you. You normally have to drop the net, fight him some more and get him closer while hoping and praying he doesn't spit the fly. With this reel you can do what they term as rod bolding. Basically you just lower your rod a little, hit the trigger to take up the slack created and then raise the rod again and put him straight in the net. You can do that one handed without dropping the net. One thing I really enjoyed saturday was the ability to strip out alot of line and cast and swing and strip my flies but then when I want to euro nymph somemore, I just hit the trigger a few times and I am back in position to euro nymph. Before I would always end up with alot of line floating downstream just begging to get tangled on something.

The only con I have so far is that it takes a little adjustment in remembering that you don't have a handle. You can see me reach for the handle in the video and then remember that I didn't have one. Other than that there is no really big learning curve.

This is probably more information than you wanted but I am really impressed with the reel so far.

[sygma]

Looks like you had another 60+ fish day at the dam... very nice video! Thanks for posting it Kevin! I could not get out of the house this past week end. I see that you got the reel as well! A gem! I hope we could get some fishin' next week end.

[Wet Fly]

Kevin,
thanks for taking the time to do a review. This information is awesome. I went back and watched the video again and I could see how handy this reel can really be. Definitely got me interested. I could probably help myself with the bad case of wrapped-in-flyline half the time I am on the water. Thanks again.

Hey fellas - Here's the website for the Thinkfish Bold:

http://www.thinkfishworld.com/web/en/producto/bold/

They cost 295 Euros... However much that is..

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by BloodKnot

Hey fellas - Here's the website for the Thinkfish Bold:

http://www.thinkfishworld.com/web/en/producto/bold/

They cost 295 Euros... However much that is..

www.czechnymph.com is where I got mine. They were running 30% off sale this month. Might be over now though.

Hey fellas - I'll be at Buford Dam from 8AM till they release water tomorrow. If you're out there,.. stop and say "hello"! I'm the guy in the rust-colored Sage visor who's catching all the fish

[Da Da's Fishing]

Originally Posted by BloodKnot

Hey fellas - I'll be at Buford Dam from 8AM till they release water tomorrow. If you're out there,.. stop and say "hello"! I'm the guy in the rust-colored Sage visor who's catching all the fish

Hey, I guess that was you with Big Orange that I ran into today. I didn't get your handle at the time. Hope you had a good day of it. Did you have a friend down stream fishing a blue assassin? I ran into him too and chatted for a bit about drag free drift. Hopefully he caught some too.

I ended with 15 or so to hand, and a very wet set of waders... but more on that later.

DD F