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What's he doing?
He's taking a picture of his reel. And a beer can.
He's doing what?

I totally get it. To regular anglers, we fly fishermen can seem a bit strange at times. And those of us who dabble in the media, stranger still.

He's taking pictures of his reel and beer can.
Why?
I don't know. You ask him.

So I guess it's no wonder that Daniel and Otto seemed a bit perplexed as I hunched in the bottom of the Crestline and rattled off a string of shots of my, well, you heard them. I suppose it's not something they see their sports do every day.

So I tried to explain to them how Sage was good enough to send me their new 6200 series reel to give a try, and how nicely it matched up with RIO's InTouch Pike and Musky fly line and my new G.Loomis Pro4X Long Handles Predator pike rod. How it was good to feature such things on the blog and other media outlets. How fly fishermen are pretty much all gear junkies, deep down, and liked to see such things.

I went into detail. How I find it hard to review reels. It holds line nicely doesn't seem quite enough, though the 6210 did it quite well and looked good doing it. How I couldn't really give the drag a good test as pike didn't run like, say, a bonefish, and that I'd only put a couple fish on the reel this week and the 6210's had started up smoothly and confidently and how it felt solid, without a shimmy. How it felt like a good reel that begged for more rigorous testing.

And how the RIO line with it's short head and powerful front taper did the trick, carrying these big northern pike flies beautifully and how it was well-coated for these cold waters and would be perfect for the winter conditions we'd be fishing in for musky down south. How I'm a big RIO fan.

And that the G.Loomis was a nice surprise, an impulse purchase before I came here to the Arctic Lodge in Saskatchewan, and how it threw these sodden streamers a country mile and had the 9/10 backbone and extended fighting butt to manage these ornery four-foot toothy creatures. How I liked the green.

The beer? Well. It was just really good beer.

And as I finished all this explaining I looked up and noticed Daniel's eyes, and attention, had drifted off to the water again. Where, in a moment, he pointed. Big one there, at the edge. The camera was hastily put down, we dropped a fly on the beast's nose, and all of the advertising was forgotten.

But in the back of his mind I know that Daniel was still thinking. These fly guys are weird.

In the end, though, he had to admit. They're pretty good fishermen.