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3. Selecting a reel, Page 2

How about the Three Penny Opera?

Matt,

now that's saying it!

I listen to Opera while tying (wife hates it, closes the door on me) but anything Classical really gets me in a calm place and at ease with the world...and peace of mind is in short supply as it is, sad to say.

I'm trying to get around to pm-ing you on streamer stuff, no Clousers but streamers all the same.

Stay well,

Roguerat

'Less is more...'

Ludwig Mies Vande Rohe

I have a ton of classical CD's. Mostly orchestral works or instrumental solos but maybe a dozen or two of opera arias and solos. Four CD's of the Three Tenors. I had a neat Tivoli Audio table radio but it died on me a while back and I found a really nice Sangean table radio with a wood cabinet and nice sound for $100. No CD player but I get very good reception from a Baltimore classical station.

Favorite classical music of all time:

Beethoven's 3rd, 6th, and 7th, but especially the 3rd;
J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, & the Christmas Oratorio, & lots more;
Handel's Royal Fireworks Suite and Water Music;
Holst's Planets Suite;
Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Swan Lake, & the Nutcracker
Debussy - lots!;
Ravel - Daphnis & Chloe;
Copeland, Appalachian Spring;
Vivaldi, lots!;
Rodrigo, guitar concertos (for 4 guitars & orchestra, etc.).

I was raised on this stuff! My late Mother's favorite composer was Jan Sebelius. I once got her a boxed set of all the Sebelius symphonies on CD for her birthday! She paid back the favor by purchasing 3 double-CD Frank Zappa sets (at a time when I was really getting into him, still some favorites!) and giving them to me for Christmas the same year.* Dad liked opera, Paul Robeson was a favorite, and lots of classical too. We had quite a musical family, I played trumpet for 7 years as did my sister the flute...my local radio station, put out by CMU Public Radio, plays classical music all morning and afternoon and I catch favorites there all the time. Right now, it's the World Café, rock-n-roll across the spectrum, mostly new but some classics get thrown in on occasion...

*So the checkout girl sees the Zappa CDs my Mother was buying and exclaimed, "These aren't for you!" To which my Mom replies, "No, of course not, they're for my son." To which the checkout girl replies, "Well, he has excellent taste!"

If ya gotta know: "Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar", "Guitar", and "You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 1". And yes, they all rock, pretty damned hard to be exact, which is the way I like it! Mom always turned up her classical music good and loud too...yep, two things I definitely shared with Mom, music and fishing.

;oD

Jonathon

I recently told my wife if I never hear Ravel's Bolero again that is fine with me. Just too much redundancy of the same phrases.

Yeah, skip Bolero, it is boring and repetitious! I don't care if Bo Derek tried to seduce Dudley Moore to it in "10"! Daphnis & Chloe is waaay more interesting and dramatic...there are a number of overplayed and cliched classical pieces. Everyone knows Beethoven's 5th and 9th..goes for rock-n-roll too, the best stuff never gets played on the radio (except maybe in the wee hours if you're lucky).

Jonathon

If you’re looking for a reel and if “Made In USA” means anything to you here is a partial list of reel manufactures whose reels are made in America: Abel Reels, Aspen Large Arbor, Avet Reels, Galvan Reels, Hatch Outdoors, IRT Reels, Lamson Reels, Ross Reels, Teton Reel & Tibor Reel. I don’t know if all their reels are made in America, but they do make some in the USA.

I haven't used an Okuma fly reel, but their spinning reels are very solid. I'd go with them!

I was raised on Chet Atkins, Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe, John Cash and Homer & Jethroe.

"My music" once I found it, turned out to be late 60's to late 70's folk/country rock. Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and their genre descendants from the Burritos to (early) Pure Prairie League to JD Souther and Emmylou Harris, etc. Only a couple doors down the hall from what I was raised on.
That's the larger half of it. The other half (somewhat unrelated and I'm unsure where it came from) is jazz/rock fusion from Steely Dan to Larry Carlton, Pat Metheny and Lee Ritenour.

My niece is a serious classical pianist with a couple of master's degrees in piano pedagogy and classical composition from good schools. She work/studied with Norwegian classical composers in Bergen for a couple semesters. Her favorite classical composer by far is Debussy.

I have only a passing familiarity with Zappa. I thought Peaches En Regalia was a fine piece of work and I fell asleep during 200 Motels.

I played trumpet, cornet and french horn in a structured environment through most of my pre-college years. I left that behind but continue to do music. Basically, if I can figure out it works, I can play it, after a fashion. Keyboards, guitar, mandolin and so on. Not very disciplined or structured though. Basically, what it amounts to is if you give me an instrument of some sort and leave me alone, I'll give you back a recognizable versions of the Star Spangled Banner in about a half hour...

Okuma makes good fly reels for the price. Very reliable and well constructed.

Here endeth pretty much everything I know.

Rleep wrote;



Wow, you are very talented. While I enjoy listening to classical music and R&R from the 1960's to the 1980's I have little musical skills. I played the flute in jhs and shs and could read music well but sometime in my mid 20's I stopped playing and have entirely forgotten how to read musical scores.

Well, that's appreciated, Matt.. I tend to see it as yet another piece of the proof that I'm lazy..:) I never really did anything with it that required long practices or a lot of discipline so I could make the most of whatever bit of talent I had. I just did what I wanted to do and no more. I'm the underachiever that gave my teachers nightmares.

Wanna hear the Star Spangled Banner on the mandolin? How about the theme song from American Bandstand? Those I can do. Just don't ask me to draw a circle. I couldn't do it to save my arse..

Rleep wrote;



What about learning to tie flies well? That takes discipline and practice (tying often so you can improve)

I remember my first forays to tie a fly when I received my first fly tying kit from my parents. Many horrible creations and frequent temper outbursts where I would bend the hook violently while it was still in the vise. I only got better because I had the discipline to stick with it.

You've not seen my flies...

Even though I've probably been tying as long if not longer (since 1963) than you, my flies are best and most kindly described as "functional" or "suggestive" rather than "imitative". Hell, even if I tried to tie a fly that was imitative, it would still almost certainly come out suggestive...:)

That's OK. They do what I want them to which is catch a fish here and there.

You're right though that there is a learning curve and a certain degree of stick-to-it is required. I learned to tie from George Herter's big thick yellow book, which in terms of getting me off to a good start was about equivalent to wearing two oven mitts on my hands and duct tape over one eye when I sat down at the vise.

But, I did get better and can now tie suggestive flies...

Rleep wrtote;



No, but you've stuck around here so long that I assume they must be good enough to get your rod bent once in awhile.

I really enjoy tying and have already tied about 500 flies since mid January. I don't like to tie dozens of the same pattern to sell but two fellows asked me to tie for them so and I agreed to help them out. It was a bit tedious but I made enough money to pay for an entire season's gas to go to my cabin on the Delaware at 450 miles round trip.

I think my flies look as nice as anything I see in fly shops and it's very hard to find any fly shops that tie thorax style dry flies which I prefer.

Here's a little more info on Piscifun Sword reels...I have a 3/4 wt and the drag is either all or nothing on the Sword II model. I was dealing with backlash all day long. I still caught fish but it could've been better. Oh well...it's a nice looking reel, constructed well, looks nice but performance is a little to be desired. Now the Piscifun Crest for a little more money fixes any issue I had with the Sword models. The 5/6 wt model costs a little under $100 and it is machined aluminum. It's a decent Chinese made reel.

Try an OKuma. Great drag. I fish a Sierra on my smaller rods.