Observations and
Notes from the Denver Fly Fishing Retailer Show
Fly Lines
Rio Products introduced a “Short” version of their Outbound integrated shooting head. The regular version of the Outbound features a 38-foot head, which has proven to be problematic for a number of people, even more experienced casters. The new “short” heads have the more traditional
30 foot length, with the weights adjusted to reflect the practice of “over-lining” a rod by 2 line weights when shooting heads are used.
Icon Products, perhaps best known as the makers of Softex, are selling a braided mono loop kit called "Perfect Loops™". This kit makes adding braided mono loops to your fly line a snap, and includes a line labeling kit. The line labelling kit is a cool tool for helping you to permanently identify the weight, taper and density of your fly line.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Softex is an extremely tough, but flexible, clear coating used for tying flies. It's probably most often used to provide a lifelike, but tough outer skin on fly bodies. But, as people have become more familiar with Softex, a number of other uses for the product have sprung up.
Icon Products owner John Ryzanych told us about an application that would be of special interest to BTB fly-fishermen: conventional-tackle offshore fishermen are starting to use Softex to coat knots in Spectra.
As many of you know, Spectra can be a problem to knot, because of the slick finish and the very small diameter. Softex apparently bonds well to Spectra, and is a good way to "lock-in" Spectra knots to help prevent slippage, and to protect Spectra knots from abrasion.
Fly Tying
While looking around at the Regal Engineering booth, we spied an unusual vise base. Their Royal C-Clamp vise has a cross-bar that is 5 inches across at the top, and features a 3.25 inch gap. It is made from black anodized aluminum, so it is very light weight, and offers an unusually stable platform for people tying big flies with heavy thread. It takes the usually 3/8” vise stand, so it is also usable with vises not made by Regal.
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