I spent Thursday and Friday on the North, and though the water conditions are great, I didn’t much sign of steelhead. One great toilet bowl flush around my skater and word from Howell that his client landed a nice fish that evening. 5 more days of shooting and we’re locking it down in the edit suite. September 1 is the planned release date so tell your friends and anyone else you’d like to impress with your knowledge that something cool is about to happen….You are so in the loop!
Just looked back at our sales records and thanks to a ton of Ed Ward fans and some loyal fly shops, we’re now planning more projects under the Skagit Master Brand….
The entire Skagit Master series will consist of: Volume 1 Featuring Ed Ward, Volume 2 Featuring Scott Howell, Volume 3 Featuring Flies, Flies and more flies, Volume 4 Midwest Steelhead, Volume 5 Warm Water Species with Two Handed Rods and Skagit Lines… It should be fun!
Thanks to the people at SAGE and Rio Products, we got to cast many new rods and match them to various lines during the production of Skagit Master Volume 2. One killer outfit turned out to be a Z Axis 7126-4 and 525 gr. Skagit Short with 12 feet of T-14 or T-17. In tight quarters, the short dense head and short rod jacked huge flies from the craziest casting positions. Overhanging limbs, blow down, streamside brush on outside bends, all presented a challenge but the rod line combination made placing a shallow D loop possible. It jacked everything we tossed at the steelhead, and Scott fishes some pretty heavy flies..
Skagit Master Volume 2, featuring Scott Howell is near completion. We think we’re gonna call it “Chasing Steelhead with Two Hands”. The film contains a lot of thinking outside the box steelheader stuff, like how to get your fly down through 6-8 feet of fast, cold winter water to resting steelhead. Basalt bedrock rivers like the North Umpqua require different techniques than say, the Skagit, so Scott shows us how to do it. Maybe we’ll call it, “If You’re Crazy Enough to Fish Here, You Need to Buy This DVD ‘Cause It Ain’t gonna Work Any Other Way”. I don’t think the DVD cover is big enough though. And there’s a lot of classic water fished in a more traditional way, so that title won’t work…We’ll let you know. Stay tuned.
Scott Howell with one of many steelhead caught during the production of Skagit Master Volume 2 Featuring Scott Howell
Welcome to the new Skagit Master Blog, a place where you are invited to be part of our world of steelhead fishing as we produce our DVD series. The Skagit Master Blog features the insights of Skagit Master DVD hosts Ed Ward (volume 1), Scott Howell (volume 2-to be release September of 2010) and Skagit Master Series producer Jeff Mishler. This is a forum for discovery. Please visit often and comment regularly.
