icast recap…

top left: geofish boys, top right: no explanation needed, bottom left: the waterfall of tinsel with john frazier in bg, next: tuffleye squid foil fly tied by the Qman, bottm right: lefty, ned lunt, president of tuffleyand al q

Well I arrived back from Las Vegas on friday night, my Southwest flight got bumped a few hours but that’s par these days. Icast was a blast, it was really cool that the entire industry was represented under one roof. In the past,  the International Fly Fishing show has been in Denver and recently in New Orleans as a solo event. My only concern was they had the fly guys on one side of the Convention center. I feel that the fishing industry should be represented as one industry, especially since this was a great opportunity for it all to be under one roof. I felt the fly guys were a little too isolated and sort of thrown to one side. I hope they can intergrate everyone at the next one in Orlando 2014. I feel it will help us to cross over a little more and build more enthusiasm in our fly fishing industry. That said, it was overall a fantastic show showcasing all the new products for next year. It is also a great conference to meet up with many old east coast faces that I do not get to see very often, sort of like a high school reunion. I was invited to tie some flies for Ned Lunt and Ashley Armbruster of Wet a Hook technologies and Tuffleye acrylic fly tying products. We tried to feature the new Bob Popovic’s  fleye foils such as the candy and squid series. Really easy and durable flies to tie and cure that represent simple baits and squids. I want to make a couple of notes about Tuffleye that I really need some of our young California fly tiers need to hear! Please take this to heart…

Tuffleye DOES NOT USE UV!!!!! It is a MEDICAL grade, FDA approved safe acrylic that has been around for over forty five years in the dental and medical industries. It what dentists use in your mouth. It uses VISIBLE BLUE LIGHT that will not harm your eyes as long as you never look into the light directly. Visible blue light is like the blue you see in the rainbow! UV is invisible,  your eyes can not react to it like visible light. UV is dangerous! THIS IS REALLY AN IMPORTANT ISSUE!  UV has been known to cause skin cancer and cataracts, that is why I choose not to fool with it. UV can cause accumulative damage, like smoking. One or two cigarettes won’t harm you but smoking packs of cigarettes over many years will catch up to you. Since I began using Tuffleye, thanks to Bob Popovics (who has more experience with epoxy than anyone I know tying fies) I can not live without it and it has changed the way I think and tie flies. Tuffleye is a great product! Please visit the Tuffleye Website for more info!

Ned Lunt is a dentist an chemist, has made sure that his product was a very safe choice for fly tiers to use to replace epoxy without UV! I use it with a clear conscience on all my flies for durability in saltwater.