Gear

That great fraternity of fishing idiots: Why fly rod warranties matter

There are more ways to break a fly rod than there are to catch a fish. A warranty can help get you back out on the water, but there are nuances to what they cover.

Nick Parish

31 Aug 2011 — 3 min read

A woeful draft.

Spotted inside a haggard outhouse at a marginally-busy parking area on the Madison. Admit it; you've been there too.

"LOST"*
SAT. JULY 16, @ NOON
CABELAS 5-6 WT ROD
AND LARGE ARBOR REEL.

_PLEASE CALL _______________

* WELL, NOT REALLY LOST, I HAVE
JOINED THAT GREAT FRATERNITY OF
FISHING IDIOTS WHO LEFT THEIR
RODS ON TOP OF THEIR CAR
AND ... YOU KNOW THE REST.

THANKS

YOUR IDIOT BROTHER

Broken rods happen. A lot.

Our idiot brother may not have broken their rod, but vehicle-rod collisions account for probably most broken rods. Getting slammed in a car door, the hatch, being left on the roof—all spell a terrible fate.

When fishing with others I always call out "Rod on the roof" when placing a rod on any vehicle's roof, as a sort of individual check-in that might help us remember it later.

I left an expensive rod on the roof of my vehicle once. (No, I was fishing alone and did not call "Rod on the roof" out to myself.) I did a U-turn to get back to the highway, and heard something slide off the truck cap. What could it have been?

I figured it out just as the FedEx truck passed in the opposite direction and turned it from a four-piece into a 47-piece.

Seeing salmon, seeing snakes, and tying simple flies

Facial recognition, but for fish, our first buzzworm of the year, and a new PCC fly-tying class for Fall Term

A salmon swims into a viewing tank and is tracked by a faint white computer-generated line and surrounded by a bounding box with its ID, species name, and confidence score percentage

Salmon Vision: The AI revolution comes to salmon conservation

Bringing the power of artificial intelligence to bear on monitoring anadromous salmon populations for faster and more efficient counts, toward more resilient watersheds

How to make your kids hate fishing

Re-writing the old tired playbook of fishing as achievement and productive time in favor of something more curious and explorational.

The complete CFS guide to learning to fly fish

Whether you're completely new to fly fishing or looking to improve your skills, this directory of all the main learning posts on Current Flow State has everything you need to be successful on the water.