by John Merwin

The wages of my fishing-tackle sin have come home to roost. Thinking about an upcoming saltwater trip to the Rhode Island shore, I pulled a favorite wide-spool baitcaster off the shelf. Bad, John. Very bad.

The reel suffers mightily from corrosion and accumulated grit. All the cleaning and maintenance I should have done last fall or winter somehow got put off. Just as such things always seem to get put off. But I want to use the reel in a couple of weeks, so now I've got to do it.

It’s a classic case of a fishing writer’s “do what I say; not what I do.” I mean, how many times have I preached about taking good care of good tackle?

by John Merwin

The International Fly Tackle Dealer Show--a fly fishing trade show--takes place in New Orleans this week, and you’re going to be hearing a lot about it. Websites and blogs devoted all or in part to fly fishing will be all over it, covering new products introduced for the coming season as well as whatever industry gossip comes their way.

With that in mind, I thought I’d offer a little inside history of the whole deal, which also involves considerable personal history as well. Through the 1970s, both fly fishing itself and fly fishing media--then mostly magazines--were growing rapidly. There was no fly fishing trade association back then, nor was there any fly fishing media devoted to the trade. There was instead a general fishing-tackle trade show (formerly known as AFTMA, now called ICAST) within which the much smaller fly fishing community felt somewhat marginalized and lost.

In 1979, when I was leaving my editing job at Fly Fisherman magazine to start what became Fly Rod & Reel magazine, I was also taking part in some industry meetings aimed at possibly starting a fly fishing trade association. Scott Rods founder Harry Wilson, Scientific Anglers head Lew Jewett, and Leon Chandler from Cortland Line were in the forefront at the time--all friends of mine and all now very unfortunately deceased.

by Joe Cermele

So I'm in Las Vegas at the annual ICAST industry tackle show checking out the latest wares (of which you'll see plenty over the next few weeks) and I bumped into Tom Tredup of RayGear looking rather Darth Vader-like. That's because he was wearing one of his new X-Shield masks, complete with vent holes for breathing and a dark, smoky finish. So what's the deal? Well, Tom believes that the X-Shield is the future of facial sun protection on the water. He's hoping you might consider replacing your sunglasses with some of his headgear.

by John Merwin

There’s a new fishing line out from Berkley this month that you’re going to be hearing a lot about. It’s called NanoFil. The company says it’s the strongest, thinnest line ever, designed specifically for greater casting distance and enhanced sensitivity with light- to medium-weight spinning tackle. I’ve finally obtained a sample, so here’s a quick report.

The line is made from Dyneema (gel-spun polyethylene) fibers as are many of the company’s other superlines. In this case, though, the fibers aren’t braided but are “molecularly linked and shaped into a unified filament,” according to Berkley. So while the line is effectively a single filament, it’s not a monofilament in the sense of extruded nylon lines. (Nor is it the same as Berkley’s FireLine, in which Dyneema fibers are fused by heat.)

It is round in cross-section, but not hard round like nylon monos. I can, for example, somewhat flatten a section of NanoFil with my thumbnail. It is, indeed, extraordinarily strong for its diameter. My sample spool is labeled 8-pound-test and .006” diameter. I measured the diameter at .007”, so it’s pretty close to spec.