Archive for January, 2008

Just a heads up – I’ll have more details shortly, but a couple of us are thinking of a Scud Fly Swap. Still trying to work out a name – “Not Your Iraqi Scuds Swap,” “Not A Dud Scud Swap,” and a few others I’ve forgotten. Maybe we’ll just call it a “Scud Swap.” Keep it simple.

Details to follow but if you’re interested, keep it in mind – we’ll likely limit the number of tiers participating to 15.

Update:

The official announcement has been made, and we’ve got a celebrity fly tier participating! Information here.

I’ll keep this post updated with the names of participants and the pattern they will be tying.

Participants:

Ian James – “Scudalicious” Bead Belly Scud

Ian Scott – TBA

Bill Ninke – Glass Bead Scud

Monte Smith – Brood Scud

Mike Hawkins – TBA

Regular readers might recognize the name Arron Varga, one of my teammates for the past two years on The Ospreys fly fishing team participating in The Canadian Fly Fishing Championships.

From personal experience, I can say that Arron is one of the most selfless anglers I know, always willing to share his knowledge about fly fishing and fly tying.  And he’s very good at both.  I’m honoured that I have been able to fly fish with him – and am proud to say that he’s been selected to be on the Canadian team heading off to New Zealand in April for the Commonwealth Fly Fishing Championships.

For these fly fishing competitions, all expenses are borne by the individual competitor. Therefore, sponsorships and fund raising activities can be very important to help get the anglers to the competitions.  To this end, The First Cast fly shop in Guelph, Ontario are holding a fund raising raffle to assist Arron and the prize is a $250.00 gift certificate.

More information is available at the The First Cast’s website.

Hurry – the draw takes place on March 8th, 2008.

This email from Ian James, I’ll post in its entirety:

“Folks:

As you probably saw in the latest issue of the Canadian Fly Fisher
Magazine, (Feb/March. 10th Anniversary) Chris M, Jack Simpson and I
have put together a fly promo to help raise a few funds for the
Canadian Youth Team.

I have posted all the info on my website. Now, it’s not the same as
the text in the CCFM as I had a wee bit more space on my site than
Chris had in the magazine.

Please take a few seconds to read the page. If you think its a good
cause (the flies are absolutely lethal) please pass the link on to
all your buddies and ask them to pass the link on to their buddies.
Please spread the word.

Here is the link.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/ianjames/czechnymph.html

Thank you.
And I do mean “thank you.”

Ian”

My own comment – I was at an auction last year when a box of Ian James’ flies went for over $500.00.  This man is a great fly tier and this is a generous way of raising funds for the Canadian Youth Fly Fishing team.

I’d be kidding Ian that these flies might be very valuable some day after his death – but that might be cutting it close after his serious heart attack he suffered last July.  But then – we’ve never been to worried about “cutting it close” jokes before.