What to Do With A Fly Rod when the Water Is Too High to Fly Fish

What to Do With A Fly Rod when the Water Is Too High to Fly Fish
Northern Wisconsin has been absolutely inundated with rain. Just lambasted, to the point that the waters I fish are at least 18" to two feet higher than they were at this time last year. High water always makes fly fishing very difficult. So what do you do when the water is too high to fish topwater bugs on a fly rod?





A beautiful three piece eight foot 3/4 weight Tycoon Tackle glass fly rod.

Well, you can always nymph and streamer fish, which I decided to do.



This is one gorgeous rod, that casts as good as it looks.

The problem with this kind of fishing at this time of year is the fact that there are literally clouds of baitfish -- perch and sunfish -- which clog the waters and make it nearly impossible to get a nymph or streamer down to where a nice bass or pike would see it. I despaired ever getting into bigger fish -- and I had a job. I was being tasked with testing a new Tycoon Tackle Co. fly rod.



D*** perch. Hate 'em! Even switched it up here to a vintage glass rod with no effect.

With options for fish running out, I turned to my brother in desperation. The new graphite fly rod manufactured by Tycoon Tackle is called the Martha Ann, named after the mother of Tycoon's owner Tim O'Brien. It's a beauty of a rod, that casts a fly line like a cannon, but I needed to get into some big fish to see how it handled. A fly rod that casts well but can't handle a fish is like a car that runs perfectly only in straight lines.

By the way, the rod is also a fund raising rod for Casting for Recovery. Pretty classy move by Tim and the Tycoon folks.

Enter my brother. He's always loved fly rods, and his particular skill is attaching ultralight spinning reels to them and fishing deep water for big walleye and pike. So in order to test the backbone, I turned it over to him, and he put on a reel and tied on a huge Husky Jerk. Within minutes he was into a 17" walleye. The rod performed like a champ.



Soon we were into bigger fish. Again a rod designed for trout was absolutely crushing big walleyes, the biggest of which (pictured below) came in at 24". It even got an eight pound pike that threw the hooks a few feet from the boat. It's a honey of a rod and strong to boot.



So I proclaim this amazing rod a success. If it can handle a big northern or walleyed pike in open water, what do you think it can do for a trout in a middling sized stream?

-- Dr. Todd

In the News: Tycoon Fishing Tackle

As some of you know, I've been helping my friend Dr. Tim O'Brien relaunch the Tycoon Tackle Company, that legendary name from the Gilded Age of Big Game Angling. For those interested in how it's going, there was a great article in the recent Charlottesville Daily Progress that does a nice job of capturing where Tycoon is at the present moment. It's an interesting read (and not just because the article quotes me!).



A Tycoon fly rod in action.

-- Dr. Todd

A Little Tycoon/Fin-Nor History

As I have been working on designing some bamboo and glass fly rods with Dr. Tim O'Brien, son of Tycoon tackle founder and IGFA Hall-of-Fame angler Frank O'Brien, I thought I would share a little article of interest to Tycoon history.

It's from a column entitled "It Costs Big to Go Fishing with a Tycoon" by Miami News sportswriter Jim Hardie and is dated January 13, 1963. It's a fascinating look at the company at the height of its powers.

"Tycoon/Fin-Nor is the Rolls-Royce of the fishing tackle industry," Hardie began. "A large (12/0) Fin-Nor reel sells for $645. A matching rod is $235. A spool of line for the reel will cost you $78."

This period in Tycoon history saw the company as part of the Southern Tackle Distributors umbrella, one of seven tackle firms owned by this large distributor. Just a few months before the article came out, Charlie Dunn Jr. had taken over from his father as president of Southern, and thus head of Tycoon/Fin-Nor as well.

The younger Dunn noted he was "interested in product improvement, and research and development of new products." History tells us he worked with noted tackle designer (and fellow boat racer) Gar Wood, Jr. in designing and building the Tycoon/Fin-Nor Wedding Cake and Spinning reels, considered classics of their kind.

If you wondered why their tackle was so pricey, it was because as Dunn noted, "our products are hand-made out of expensive materials." For example, just the spool from a Tycoon/Fin-Nor reel was machined from a 16-pound piece of bar aluminum, of which fourteen pounds went to waste at the cost of nearly $1 a pound at the time. And that was just the spool!

The company was proud of its history. As Hardie wrote:

The history of the Fin-Nor reel reads like an adventure story. It was invented in 1934 by a machinist named Fred Grieten. He worked at the Finlay-Norwood Machine Shop, hence the name -- Fin-Nor.

The second Fin-Nor ever made is now a show piece at Southern Tackle. It cost $1000 to make, and works as well today as it did back in 1934. During its first two years of use, the reel accounted for more than 13,000 pounds of fish caught. During this time it was used to land more than 40 fish weighing over 300 pounds each.



Of course, anyone interested in Fin-Nor history should purchase a copy of Bruce Matthews and Ed Pritchard's Fin-Nor: The Legacy Years and, of course, Tim O'Brien's The Tycoon Tackle Story. Both are exceptional histories.

And the neat thing is Tycoon is alive and well. Tim O'Brien tells me that a deal is in the works that will match up the new Tycoon rods with one of the most legendary names in all of saltwater reel history -- but he's not at liberty yet to tell us who it is! Knowing Tycoon history, it will be a match made in heaven. When I find out, I'll be sure to post it here.

-- Dr. Todd