Basically, you hand HMH your email address (they’ll eventually send you a newsletter, and promise not to spam you or offer your email address to anyone else), and they’ll enter you to win an HMH Spartan Vise and a Tube Fly Convertor.

That’s it. Easy, eh?

Yes. Hell Yes.

Frankly, when HMH mentioned a contest and said they wanted to advertise it on the Underground, I loved the idea. And yeah, when I realized that an advertiser probably shouldn’t enter the contest, I was bummed (I’ve tied on an HMH Standard for many, many years).

Still, what’s good for the Undergrounders is good for the Underground, and hardly anything’s better than free stuff.

So thanks to HMH for throwing down a little bit of their marketing budget and supporting the Trout Underground and the other Underground Writer’s sites (Singlebarbed, The Day Tripper, and Fly Fish Chick).

No fly fishing blog is currently attracting much in the way of ad dollars, and it’s nice to see that HMH is interested in the online world at the grassroots level.

The contest runs until June 1, and yes, their vises rock. To enter, just click on the ad in the sidebar, drop your email in the slot on the landing page, and you’re in. Even a fly tyer could do it.

See you at the Freebie Aisle, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fly tying,hmh,hmh vise,spartan vise,tube flies,free stuff

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Like any psychotic disorder, fly tying tends to encourage obsessive behavior, and while we’d never suggest that the bloggers named below necessarily fall into that category, we would also caution you to shield the eyes of sensitive types and small children before scrolling any further.

It turns out that fly tying, my friends, is often unpretty.

The Daytripper Courts Organization… and Divorce

While you might think “unpretty” is a pretty strong word, how else do you describe the Daytripper’s recent attempt to completely catalog & rearrange his fly tying materials into some kind of logical system?

Has he not considered the damage done to the fly tying materials industry when tyers stop mistakenly buying two or three of every item because they’re aware they already have one at home? Is this the kind of economy-killing insanity we can look forward to from Daytripper?

Apparently not content to stifle our nation’s struggling economy, Alex even tempts divorce with an ill-advised plan to empty his wife’s file cabinet of valuable documents, converting it into fly tying materials storage.

They say you never see the bullet with your name on it, but any experienced fly tyer can see the Daytripper’s divorce papers hurtling his way.

RIP, Alex. You never saw it coming, but we did.

Tamanawis Does IT Again, and By “IT” We Mean “Goes Insane”

It’s never pretty when a fly tyer goes over the edge. Here we have a textbook case; Mike at Tamanawis isn’t content to simply organize his hooks or beads.

No siree, he steps wholly into the abyss with a Fly Tying Storage System Boldly Named: FARTS.

What was needed was a way to transport everything I could possibly need for any possible situation. Fluff, feathers, bobbins, the whole shebang. The system needed to be hardwearing, reliable, small and most importantly, easily transportable. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you… the Far-reaching And Ridiculously Tenacious fly tying System (FARTS to you and I).

Following on the heels of his Stand of Majesty, his new system includes the Folders of Beauty, the Cube of Domination and the Boxes of Sublime Reason. (We suggest an addition: The Little White Pills of Sanity [prozac].)

Sure, we normally love that Tamanawis guy, but now, frankly, we’re a little afraid of him. Before it’s too late, we urge him to STOP THE MADNESS (and you can tell we mean it because we used capital letters).

See you in the looney bin, Tom Chandler.

Technorati tags: fly tying, fly fishing, fly tyer, tamanawis, daytripper blog, insane behavior

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The results are interesting, at least in as much as he ties some interesting flies with the stuff, though frankly, we would have been far more interested if he’d burned down the house and been pummeled by his girlfriend.

THAT would have made a great post (for future reference). Instead, we get:

Domestic bliss shattered by my failure to iron shirts, but as it was for Science, its a worthy martyrdom. Angelina fibers are available in a heat fusible flavor, insert a pinch of fibers into a paper napkin, pass an iron over them a couple times and the of fibers fuse flatly to each other, yielding a Tyvek style mesh cloth.

Prior posts concerning Angelina include a Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear test, and his initial post about the stuff. Worth a read for you fly tying geeks.

Technorati Tags: fly tying, fly fishing

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