Luyen Chou’s Angler’s Journal is a very nicely designed blog with some great shots of Do It Yourself bonefishing on Eleuthera.
There’s even a nice pic of Reel-Time founder Thorne Sparkman to be found there!
Well, there’s always ice fishing, right?
I don’t know. There’s still a TON of snow on my yard, so the ponds must be as deep. I don’t especially want to beat my brains out wading through snow to drill a hole, but it seems like last week’s weather was cold enough to firm the ice up enough for a good outing.
I love ice fishing.
Here’s the 2003 Reel-Time Ice Conclave on Lovell’s Pond in Cotuit. That’s New England moderator Bob Parsons looking like a human traffic cone, flanked by fly tying moderator Shaun Ruge and Kayak moderator Sam Riley. My kids are messing around there somewhere.
On the verge of turning February, I have to take the blame for cursing the winter of 2005 in a stupid remark made in a meeting, when in the obligatory small talk phase about the weather I inanely hexed myself by saying, “Knock on wood, this isn’t going to be a bad winter.”
The person I said this to was annoyed and told me I better hope so. Four days later and it’s blowing a biblical blizzard outside and nothing seemed further away than this scene — fly fishers working the Narrows in Cotuit for schoolies.
Well, I did the math and it is exactly 90 days until May 1. Sure, you can go catch a striped bass right now in places like Scorton Creek (where apparently a freeze-off has killed some of the holdover fish) but nothing compares to that first fresh fish, crawling with sea lice.
Hang in there, hold your breath, and better times are coming around the corner.
The best reel I own is a Tibor Everglades I bought in 1995 from a tackle store in West Palm Beach.
Whatever you’ve heard about this reel in terms of praise, double it.
You can check them out at Tibor’s website.
Mine is gold. It has some dings, but those are my fault. The thing is built like a brick, but a lot lighter. It is one of the most beautiful gadgets I’ve ever owned. A well-machined piece of perfection and precision.
Welcome to my first posting in my Reel-Time FLog — that’s what happens when a fishing log meets a blog — therefore I am committing the act of “flogging.”
What we hope to do here at Reel-Time is modestly revolutionize the concept of community-based publishing which we helped pioneer ten years ago when we introduced one of the very first bulletin board systems for fanatical saltwater flyfishermen. That system has grown to the largest community of saltwater flyfishermen in the world and has propelled Reel-Time to the top ranking for “saltwater fly fishing” at Google.
What we hope to accomplish at Reel-Time is proof that the next phase in the evolution of online communities is one where the participants “own” their own space — creating an online journal where they can state their opinions, share news, build pointers to other online resources, upload images, and many other things that the concept of blogging offers them.
In turn, we see Reel-Time as a “meta-blog”, connecting its members individual blogs by highlighting new postings, forging cross-connections between them, and providing the tools and technology for our users.
Sure, anyone can start a blog. Thousands are started every day, but as far as we know, no one has attempted to build a community of blogs, acting as an umbrella above them, connecting them and fostering their development. We hope to take advantage of the “push” notification at the core of blogging that permits new content to be sent — via a special reader — to users whenever a change is made. This notification, and the ability for people to comment on postings (published at the discretion of the FLog owner), makes flogging a new and powerful concept in online publishing.
No, this does not mean that the classic threaded bulletin board format that our 8000+ users are familiar with will go away. We will continue to support our forums and use them to direct traffic into our members’ Flogs.
One of the greatest pieces of advice given to a beginning angler is to keep a log of his or her fishing experiences, so that, over time, patterns and insights will emerge from the tough classroom of first-hand experience. We envision Flogs as online fishing logs — places for people to post their reports, their tips, and to create an online journal of their experiences.
We look forward to seeing how this develops.
Hats off to Mark Cahill, Reel-Time editor extraordinaire for brining this powerful tool to our users.
David Churbuck