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“Nature Boy Designs provides a fresh new outlook on the sport of Fly Fishing. My products are a result of years of working in the fly fishing industry. Fly Fishing gear should be cool and yet be super functional. You will see this represented throughout the product line.”

Of the many products NBD produces, the rod tubes and the lanyards definitely stand out amongst the rest.  I’ve yet to get out on the water and actually fish with one of these, but what could be so different than wearing my waders and the lanyard around the house? Not much…So this evening I threw on my waders and slid the lanyard into place. The lanyards are designed to slide onto where your shoulder straps buckle, but it doesn’t end there. You can also attach them to your belt, chest pack and so on. They also offer many color combos at your request. The lanyards are very functional and unlike others, does not get in the way. That is a huge plus for me. They come with five separate clasps to carry whatever you decide, but offers a great spot for the essential items out on the water; floatant, nippers, hemo’s, tippet…etc. Another plus, which many people might not realize about these lanyards is the fact that they are a potential life saver. 550 cord provides a break strength of 550lbs. I don’t know the full details, but I’m sure there is more than enough length in one of these to provide many different uses if need be.

Overall I see this lanyard as a great addition to anyones arsenal, especially for a measly $24.95. It’s perfect for any day on the water, whether you be a minimalist or someone who packs for multiple scenarios. It keeps the important tools ready at all times.

For more information on the lanyards as well as the custom rod tubes and the rest of their lineup check out Nature Boy Designs. You can also follow them on Facebook for future updates.

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Who are the founders of Cheeky?
Max Key, Peter Crommett, Ted Upton and Scott Caras.

What led to the start of Cheeky?
The idea of breaking the mold. We wanted to see a change in fly fishing that promoted the fun, adrenaline pumping, thrill-seeking side of the sport and aspired to help lead that change. Our goal was to develop high-quality fly reels and apparel designed to emphasize style and performance rather than tradition.

What was the idea behind the name Cheeky? Was it a collaborative effort or a single person’s idea?
Collaborative. Cheeky is a word that not only describes our company vision but how we want people to feel when they’re using our products on the water: confident, bold and fearless.

What do you think makes you different from all of the other fly reel companies?
The list is long. From design, color and industry leading specifications to our dedication to conservation and unparalleled customer service, our goal is to push the sport forward at every level. Just last week, a guy called to thank us for sending his Mojo 425 so quickly (he was hopping on a plane the next day) and we ended up talking about salmon flies for over an hour. We always make time to talk fishing.

From what we see around the social networks, it seems like the company has kicked off to a great start. Did you predict it would grow this quickly?
I don’t think any of us expected this. A priority of ours from the beginning was to stay connected to our customers, followers and industry colleagues. We wanted to support the fly fishermen and women pushing the limits of the sport through social media. Every morning I wake up to an inbox full of fishing stories, pictures and news from our followers. It makes my day.

How long did it take to produce the very first Cheeky fly reel, from the brainstorming stage to hot off the press? What did it feel like to produce your first reel? It was a big rush wasn’t it?
Oh man, it took us awhile and there is no doubt that it was a huge rush! The process of tweaking and testing our designs took nearly two years, and during this time, we incorporated many different components, cuts and designs and also conducted extensive field and lab testing. Finally we came to what you see today.  There is no doubt that the adrenaline was pumping during the assembly of the first finished reel.

What was the thought process behind using carbon fiber in the sealed disk drag system?
After testing various materials and combinations, we found that carbon fiber produced the most reliable and consistent drag.  Especially under heavy drag settings, we found the startup inertia, heat dissipation, durability and stopping power were the best with the materials we incorporated.  

What other products might you introduce that are not already available?
We are constantly looking at new products to compliment the reels.  Currently, we are working to further develop our line of outdoor technical gear and apparel and are excited about a few other fishing accessories. That’s about all I can say…

What was the first fish caught on a cheeky fly reel?
The first fish caught on a Cheeky prototype was a 14” Landlocked Salmon on the Magalloway River in western Maine. The reels have come a long way since then.

How does Cheeky define a “progressive” fly angler?
Progressive fly fishermen are those who are pushing the limits of the sport to new levels.  That could mean chasing new species in your backyard, traveling the world pursuing the next record, creating new and exciting films or anything else that will help define Fly Fishing over the next decade.  Cheeky is there to meet the needs of these individuals, those who demand more from their equipment and apparel than ever before.

What is Cheeky’s stance on conservation? Does Cheeky belong to any conservation programs?
Since day one Cheeky has taken an active role in conservation.  Cheeky is a member of 1% for the Planet and also raises money throughout the year for organizations like Stripers Forever, the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust and Casting For Recovery.

It may be too soon, but are there any plans for future reels, after your current lineup has been released?
Right now we are continuing to focus our efforts on the current lineup of reels.  We want Cheeky to become synonymous with the highest performing reels on the market, and believe the best way to do that is to pour all our energy in to our primary line.  If you’re looking for new products, though, keep an eye on our Swag page. We plan to expand our line in 2012.

What will be the next reel to debut and when? Color combination? Species? Weight?
The next reel to debut will be the Thrash 475.  For now, the color combination remains a secret, but think bright and bold.  The Thrash 475 is well suited for 10 to 12 weight lines and species such as Permit and Tarpon.

Since the launch of Cheeky, what was one of the most exciting outings on the water?
That’s a tough one.  We’ve had some pretty incredible opportunities to fish all over the country since starting the business.  Some of the highlights include hitting the Hendrickson hatch perfectly on the Delaware River, winter browns on the Green and a couple incredible days of blitzing stripers off the New England Coast.  The biggest adventure so far was the five-week trip we did from Maine to the Florida Keys with our prototype reels in the fall of 2010.  We put the reels in over 40 guides’ hands for feedback and had the opportunity to do some awesome fishing—fall stripers off Manhattan, tailing Charleston redfish, 100+ pound tarpon in the Gulf and permit in the keys.  It was definitely a trip of a lifetime!

Where has this company taken you? What has been your favorite fishing locale?
The coolest places we’ve visited are the areas where life is all about fishing … a drift boat or skiff in every driveway and a fly fishing section in the town’s general store that rivals an Orvis. Carrabelle, FL is one of these places ­­– the hurricane’s that regularly hit this part of the Gulf keep all but the hardest core fishermen away – but the pristine flats off the coast are like a dream to anyone chucking a fly in search of reds, bones, or tarpon.  It was really a cool experience to spend a couple days in the community.

Any future plans to participate in any fly fishing shows?
We love to do shows and events—not only are they great for our business, but they also give us a chance to enjoy the awesome company of others who have a passion for the sport.  This year we’ll be participating in a handful of events including The Salty Fly Tournament in Apollo Beach, which was one of last year’s highlights, the Derby out on Martha’s Vineyard and the IFTD show in Reno.  We’re also looking forward to continuing to work with some of the charities we’ve developed strong relationships with including Casting for Recovery, Stripers Forever and the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust.

In closing, as far as customer service goes, what level of service can a customer expect from Cheeky?
As an independent manufacturer, we’re able to focus more time and effort on our customers. Cheeky is fully committed to providing superior service and always excited to hear from fly fishermen and women. We’re all ears. Cheeky is dedicated to incorporating feedback into our product design to ensure we are delivering products that meet the demands of our customers.

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• New Cheeky Fly Reel: Ambush 375

One I recently came across was the new issue of Pool 32 Magazine. Compared to other magazines, it is quite loaded, sitting at busty 325 pages. Definitely worthwhile to check this one out!

For future issues check out their blog @ Pool 32 Mag and subscribe. You can also follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

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• Catch Magazine – Issue #21

We received a nice package in the mail today from a Mr. Lyle Graff of Rite Bobbins. If you haven’t heard of these before, be sure to check out their website. They have taken tying bobbins to the next level.

Were not going to beat around the bush, so we’d like to give one away right off the bat. Post a picture on the Global Fisher Facebook page of a fly you tied. There is no specific theme, so throw one up. The contest will end on the 31st at midnight CST. We will randomly select a winner on the 1st of February to receive any “one” model offered by Rite Bobbins.

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On the final evening of our trip, we enjoyed a feast prepared by expert saltwater fly fisher, FFF certified casting instructor and VANY volunteer, David Blinken. We called it “Bahamian Thanksgiving” with native conch salad, sautéed grouper, brown rice with chicken from the Abaco Big Bird poultry farm and spiny lobster or “crawfish” tails. We were packed and ready for an “0 dark-thirty” run back to Marsh Harbour Airport for our return to New York City after a week of fly fishing for bonefish on Abaco Island.

Robert “Nicko” Gill, the youngest of our four veterans who, like Andrew Roberts, a West Point graduate, served in Iraq, Exer Quinonez, and Manuel “Manny” Vasquez, a Green Beret during the Vietnam War, thanked the three VANY volunteers, David, Phil Shook, outdoor writer and FFF certified fly casting instructor and Richard Franklin. Nicko spoke about one of our two guided days on the trip when he was perched upon the bow of a skiff as Kendall, our Bahamian guide, quietly poled the boat and, in hushed tones, said, “OK, we are going to meet a single bonefish. He is at 11 o’clock about 120 feet. Get ready. Do you see him? 80 feet coming straight at us, start casting…drop the fly! Start stripping, strip, strip…do not worry, we will find another one but that was a big fish”. Nicko struggled to execute; all the practice casting in NY City’s Central Park was forgotten, a nervous anxiety evoking some difficult experiences from the past pervaded him. “I just can’t do it”. “Oh yes you can and you will; stop standing on your fly line and get ready for the next fish”. It did not come easily but Nicko hooked a tailing bonefish which screamed line off his reel and, brought to hand, reaffirmed all the progress he had made since a doctor at the Brooklyn VA suggested he contact the Veteran Anglers of New York, the local chapter of Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing. Nicko continued at the dining room table that he thought we should each say a few words about our most memorable moments during the past week; “I not only can cast twice as far as I did when I arrived, riddled with anxiety, but I can initiate this discussion too”.

Andy agreed that, until he became involved with PHWFF-VANY, he was not fully aware of the impact PTSD had on his life. Andy had fished casually with spinning gear in the past but began fly fishing for striped bass, first at Montauk with VANY and now on his own whenever he has the opportunity. When he hooked his first-ever bonefish whatever sound his reel may have made was not audible as Andy’s vocal expression of excitement masked its sound.

And so it went around the table with veterans thanking volunteers, volunteers thanking veterans and fish tales that were already being expanded upon. All had harmoniously contributed to the success of this ambitious outing that began seven months earlier at a fund-raising event. The Theodore Gordon Flyfishers annual dinner and conservation fundraiser occurs in March and Tamar and Richard Franklin were in attendance. Tamar entered a bid in the silent auction for a rental house in southern Abaco with expansive windows and a deck overlooking a bonefish flat. Tamar, the program lead of VANY and PHWFF Regional Coordinator of the Mid-Atlantic Region believed she would be out-bid, but that did not occur and we went home with the paperwork for a lovely rental property with the capacity to house eight anglers. It never crossed Tamar’s mind that we would do anything other than create VANY’s most ambitious and elaborate outing in our 5 year history centered around this fortuitous auction success. Planning stages ensued: volunteers with bonefishing experience made commitments and we prepared participating veterans whose casting skills were accelerating and whose personal and medical situations permitted a week-long trip to a Bahamian out-island. Specialized tackle was needed along with flies, dates needed to be arranged with the house’s owner, guides were contacted and confirmed and plane tickets and on-the-ground van rental had to be procured. VANY volunteer, Chris Parker, skillfully juggled itineraries; the last outstanding passport was received less than a week prior to departure and Chris still managed to get everyone on the same flights. Orvis New York’s, Rob Ceccarni, donated custom embroidered fishing shirts, the Deckers Corporation provided sophisticated “Teva” footwear, tropical fly lines were procured from both RIO and Scientific Anglers. Bruce Olson of Umpqua Feather Merchants patiently worked out a comprehensive order of bonefish flies to supplement the boxes of flies made and tied by Phil that in turn were further enriched by the surprise receipt of a beautiful box of flies tied by Kevin Black and his fishing buddies on the gulf coast of Texas.

Arriving in Marsh Harbour, one contingent headed to our home for the week at Casurina Point while three of us headed into town to obtain provisions from Maxwell’s Market. “Just up the street” proved to be an oversimplified direction requiring us to ask a pedestrian at the end of town for clarification. “If it is permitted, I will ride with you and show you precisely where it is”, the grey bearded gentleman responded. He introduced himself as Gaston and provided a poetic monolog as he guided us to our destination. “And where might you be going, Gaston?” “Oh, not too far from here”, he replied. “We shall drive you there”, to which he responded, “My, humanity has indeed come a long way!” Well stocked with groceries, we found our way to Casurina Point by dusk whereupon Phil, who had ascended the ladder to the lookout perched atop the roof of our house, informed us that bonefish, barracuda and small sharks were visible cruising our home flat.

On the first morning, Manuel, prepared breakfast of course-cut oats and flax seed. Once fortified, we crossed a channel to an ocean flat bordered, during low tide, by two sand bars. It wasn’t long before two sizable grey shadows moved toward us only to be forever obscured by a passing cloud. As the tide flooded in, we waded toward one of the now diminishing bars in a freshening wind. “Did you see that, Manny? That was the tail of a feeding bonefish in that little cut in the bar. Cast there!” A cast directly into the teeth of the breeze proved futile but we enjoyed seeing our first tailing bonefish of the trip.

Our guides fished out of Sandy Point at Abaco’s southern extremity, a 45 minute drive through a continuous stand of pine trees with an understory of small palms. Very little development penetrated the tropical forest until we reached the pink, blue and turquoise houses of the settlement of Sandy Point. One of the guides awaited our arrival to wave us down a sandy spit to the three waiting boats and, within moments, we were motoring off toward flats and creeks in the lee of the breeze. Kirk cut his engine and poled us onto a flat outside a shallow creek mouth. “The fish want to get up towards the mangroves in that creek”, he explained, “and should be coming up on this flat any time now”. “Look there, towards that chunk of coral, you see that?” “Those are tails of a good school of feeding fish at about 200 feet”. Andy and Kirk waded toward the glistening tails and once close enough, Andy started casting to bonefish. The fish were tough on this day; harassed not only by us but sharks and huge barracuda, they were on guard and, of course, they are the world’s most nervous fish to begin with! The wind building to some 20 knots didn’t aid our delicacy of presentation either.

The wind continued the next day and clouds built too. Some of our crew fished our home water while four of us piled into the van for some exploration. The map of the island indicated a chain of little cays close to shore to our north that might provide shelter from the breeze. Every dirt road heading east off the main paved road saw our tire tracks. A dead end at a limestone quarry here, a loop returning to the main road there and, finally, a bit of a track heading into a thicket of Australian pine which we slowly traversed to its terminus at a coral point. There, a channel connected a deep bay facing the Atlantic Ocean and, in the glooming, early evening, overcast greyness, a magnificent lagoon with a broad turtle grass flat giving way to sandy flats bordered by mangroves. Twice during our stay on Abaco we visited this lagoon that was home to bonefish, big bonefish. On our last afternoon of fishing prior to our “Bahamian Thanksgiving” dinner, David and Andy ventured into the southern section of these flats, encountered numerous tailing fish and, after three stupendous runs, David brought to hand a superb nine pound bonefish. “It was one of a group of three tailing fish”, he later explained, “the smallest of the three”.

The middle of our week’s stay was Wednesday, December 7th, a beautiful day and our second outing with our guides. Mores Island is an hour’s run in a boat thus accessible only on as calm a day as was dawning before us. We saw bonefish from the minute we arrived and each flat was more beautiful than the one before. There were no Styrofoam buoys, plastic bottles or masses of polypropylene netting up in the mangroves, it was as pristine an environment as it would have been had we gone back in time. When the tide turned in the afternoon we saw Phil, Andy and Exer wading and casting near a small mangrove island amidst a broad turtle grass flat. We motored widely around them and our guide began to pole the skiff. “There, do you see those tails?” and he pointed. We got out of the boat and waded toward them but did not have to go far for it was not one group of tails; bonefish were feeding all around us…three tailers here, five there, ten beyond them and more behind us as well. It was not long before our guide, Kendall, had Nicko into a sizzling run as a bonefish ripped line then backing from his reel.

Savoring the complex flavors of the Bahamian ceviche, conch salad, and appreciating David’s skill in preparing the crawfish and grouper, the time to say a few words rotated to me. Having been involved in the planning stages of this trip that involved more miscues than Abaco has dead end roads, I marveled at the simplicity and harmony of every aspect of our stay on Abaco. Fly tying ideas from the classics to the newest innovations and abundant materials were shared by all each night after dinner with many bonefish caught on flies tied the night before. The definition of veteran participant and Project Healing Waters, VANY volunteer dissolved into a single, engaged group of fly fishers.

“In the time of my father, on December 7th 1941, the United States suffered a nation-changing maritime disaster at Pearl Harbor in the Pacific. During our stay here in Abaco on December 7th 2011, the Veteran Anglers of New York triumphed at Mores Island in the Bahamas on a day that will live on famously, at least amongst our small group. On this anniversary, we dedicate VANY’s longest, most elaborate and successful outing to the will and might of our fellow Americans who continue to preserve and protect our freedom and make an adventure like this possible”.

All Photographs © Richard Franklin 2011

PHWFF-VANY Richard Franklin December 2011

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Along with the Rite Standard comes four other models including the brand new Rite Half Hitch Mag Bobbin. This innovative product is surely to catch along quickly with the convenience of a two in one tool. What is so revolutionary about this bobbin is the fact that it allows you to half hitch and whip finish right on the tapered barrel of the bobbin. Another neat feature is the O-ring grip and thread keeper, small additions that definitely make a difference. It is capable of tying on a wide range of hook sizes as well as many different elements of fly tying.

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• Rite Bobbin Giveaway!

The folks at Willy J came up with one bad-ass PB&J protector! I’d pack my lunch around in one of these without hesitation! Might even send my daughter off to kindergarden with one…

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There is a neat section on macro photography, which I especially enjoyed. Great tips.

Although this may be the last “free” issue, head over to Catch Magazine and show your support. If you enjoy it as much as I do, you will continue showing your support for their hard work even when it is a paid subscription.

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• Pool 32 Magazine
• New Issue of Catch Magazine is out!

The Korkers Snowjack are built tough, king king aint got nothing on them. They are constructed with 400 grams of Thinsulate insulation to surely keep your feet warm, in whatever condition mother nature may throw your way. Cabin fever in Alaska blows, these long harsh Winters prevent us from doing just about any fishing. This past weekend we set out on an adventure into the ice fishing world to see what all this hype was about. The weather was a balmy -30 degrees below zero, so cold you grow frozen waterfalls from your nose. I made it quite a while without any problem, but in that cold you really need some high quality protection. Through the time we were perched on the lake I can honestly say, my feet were one of the only parts of my body that did not hurt. The Snowjacks are completely waterproof as well as breathable, which make for a great pair of boots. The neatest feature that is the signature touch of Korkers is their OmniTrax 3.0 interchangeable sole system. With the Snowjacks come two different soles, the SnowTrac Winter Rubber Lug, and IceTrac Studded Rubber Lug with 32 carbide studs per sole, which in reality should cover all your Winter needs. It was funny this past weekend as we were walking to where we would fish that day a buddy of mine kept loosing his footing and slipping to the ground. I suggested a pair of Korkers as I assisted him in getting up.

For more information check out the Snowjacks on the Korkers website. If your looking for something slightly different, check out the IceJack and the StormJack, you will not be dissapointed.

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