I just got back from a soggy fishing trip in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Thanks to continuous and heavy rains, the Beaverkill was high and muddy. So were the East and West Branches of the Delaware. I did get in some trout fishing in the upper reaches of the Willowemoc, as that stream clears before other area streams, but that was about it.

Once home, I did something I rarely do: I put all my flyreels on my workbench, took them apart, and cleaned and lubed them. On a roll, I also pulled out a couple of Shimano Symetre spinning reels, stripped them down, and cleaned and lubed them as well. 

I point this out because, for the first time, I actually had an official reel cleaning kit. (In the past, I used anything I had lying around – usually an old toothbrush and some WD-40.) This kit has all you need: a Reel Kleen Degreaser, Reel Butter Oil and Grease, a brush and swabs, a combo Phillips/flathead screwdriver, and a silicone cloth, all in a snap-shut plastic case that could easily fit into a tacklebox. It’s a good idea – like having a Hoppe’s gun cleaning kit, for fishing. Cost is $19.95; ardentreels.com. If you go to their website, check out their casting reels. Good stuff and it’s made in the U.S.A. – Jay Cassell

John Merwin's last blog post was both revelation and relief for me.

Revelation because you simply don't expect the fishing editor of Field & Stream to tell you he uses and enjoys $39 fly reels. Relief because I've been shopping around for a new reel to put on a custom five-weight rod and it seems to answer a question that's been bugging me throughout the entire process, which is: why the hell are high-end fly reels so damn expensive and do I really need one?
 
Case in point: On the left we have a used Sage 3200, discontinued but still bringing a couple hundred bucks on the used market. On the right, an ordinary current-production Calcutta 200B that retails for around $199. The Calcutta is mine. The Sage I stole from my brother because I own zero nice fly reels, all mine having been purchased from pawn shops for about the same price as a McDonalds Happy Meal.
 
Take apart the Calcutta and you'll find gears, ball bearings and lots and lots of forged, machined and intricately-connected parts. Take apart the Sage and you'll find, well, not a whole lot. Now I realize the Sage is a click-pawl reel and as such doesn't have a drag but I've looked at a lot of drag-equipped reels in the $150 to $300 range and I have to admit I just can't see why they cost so much. And don't get me wrong: this isn't about bass vs. trout equipment or elite vs. Bubba attitudes. The same argument could very easily be made about baitcasters because in terms of pure functionality there isn't a helluva lot of difference between a $69 Ambassadeur C3, a $200 Calcutta or a $450 Conquest. But from a manufacturing, materials and machining standpoint I can at least see where the price increases come from.

Not so with fly reels, at least to my eyes.
 
Does my lack of sophistication simply blind me to what high-end fly reels bring to the experience? Are they simply that much harder to make than a baitcaster? It's an honest question because I'm wavering here on my impending reel choice. On one hand I'm a degenerate high-end tackle junkie who would love to pair up my new rod with an equally classy reel. On the other hand I am chronically impoverished, so if John Merwin says a $39 reel will get the job done admirably and won't get me laughed off the river (I'll let my casting do that) then I find it awfully hard to break out the piggy bank.

Any thoughts?

I was still feeling a bit nostalgic after my last blog on magazines and memories, so I started digging around the Net for sites that cater to such urges when I stumbled across this website.
 
It's basically a clearinghouse of information and history on great American products that have since gone on to that great department store in the sky. If you look around the site long enough I promise you'll find something to jog some long-dormant youthful memory.
 
Case in point: all you children of the 70s, here's what happened to our beloved Morton Honey Buns.
 
Unfortunately the site doesn't list any great old outdoors companies or products (or at least any I could find) but it got me to thinking: what long-gone hunting and fishing brand names or products take you back? Since the seventies and eighties were my Halcyon Days, I groove to products endorsed by guys sporting lots of facial hair, butterfly collars and trucker hats, but it could be from any decade or time.
 
I'll throw out the first one: The Lew's Speed Stick. The late Lew Childre introduced a number of innovative products in the mid to late seventies, and the Speed Stick rod was one of them. In 1983 I saved enough birthday money to get a 5'6" pistol-grip medium-heavy action Lew's Speed Stick attached to a Shimano Bantam 100 and it was my worm, jig, spinnerbait, crankbait, topwater, pitching, flipping, catfishing, perching and everything else rod.

I don't know exactly when the Speed Stick disappeared, but gone they are. If you want one now it's garage sales, pawn shops, or Internet auction sites, and most of them are, to put it mildly, well-used. I'm still searching for a decent specimen to add to my collection.
 
Anybody else?

I seldom take fashion news seriously, not because my wardrobe originated in a buy-one-get-one-free bin, but rather my belief that high fashion is more about art than the actual wearing of clothes, and as such, why get worked up about it? Of course it looks ridiculous, is obscenely expensive, and serves absolutely no purpose other than to provoke a response. That's what art is supposed to do.

But sometimes you come across something so transcendentally inane it simply begs to be ridiculed.

From the story in Newsweek:

Introducing haute Americana, one of the most powerful—and paradoxical—forces in men's sportswear... in recent years a number of tastemakers, many foreign, have dedicated themselves to reviving iconic American clothing for a hip new audience...The result—on ample display in places like Brooklyn, N.Y., and Portland, Ore., where certain streets now resemble catwalks crowded with bookish lumberjacks—is a subset of prosperous peacocks paying a premium for garments originally meant for mining or fishing, then wearing them to tapas bars and contemporary art installations.

So now we have a sensitive, limpid-eyed guy shuffling down the sidewalk of a trendy shopping district on his way to open-mic poetry night, Chairman Mao handbag slung over his frail Vegan shoulders. In the right front pocket of his Italian-tailored Filson tin cloth bird pants he's sporting a new pocketknife and he just discovered that the rows of little round thingies on the inside pockets of his slim-cut, virgin-wool game vest are perfect for holding aromatherapy canisters.

Don't get me wrong: I don't begrudge the concept. It's silly, but if modern urban males want to indulge in the illusion of being the kind of man those clothes represent, more power to them. It's really no different from guys who collect big knives, wear tactical gear and fantasize about being snipers. Meanwhile, all of us who wear these suddenly-trendy clothes out of function rather than fad should start haunting the bargain bins, because any day now the fashion world will discover that the essence of modern male is represented by something entirely different, and all those high-dollar man-duds will start getting dumped off at the second-hand store.