2008 Fly Fishing Retailer Show – Morning One

For those unfamiliar with the Fly Fishing Retailer Show in the U.S., it’s the one-time-a-year fall event that brings fly fishing manufacturers together to display new products to retailers and distributors. As we have for the past two years, MidCurrent will be at the showing testing and evaluating the new offerings and blogging on items of interest as well as writing a full review of new products that will appear next week on our site. This year we’ll also be posting daily podcast interviews with company executives and product designers at the end of each day, so be sure to check those out.
What is there to look forward to this year? So far manufacturers have mostly kept their promise to retailers that they will be the first to know about new products, but we’ve heard lots of exciting rumors, among them:

• Abel has a brand new reel design, and Tibor is introducing a reel just for spey casters. Ross, Loop and Ari Hart also will show new reels at the show, and Sage is showing off a new line of six reels to match their updated rod lines.
• Orvis has taken Helios technology and applied it to both larger saltwater rods and some specialty trout rods. Sage is replacing their FLi series of rods with a similarly priced “Flight” series. G.Loomis, Scott and others are introducing new shorter, stouter rods for warmwater, bass and shoreline-saltwater applications (seems to be the trend this year).
• Scientific Anglers is giving a bunch of their new lines a Sharkskin coating, while Cortland is entering the clear-line fray with a new crystal-clear line. RIO is turning their eyes to saltwater with some brand new tapers.
• In waders and boots, the themes this year are hard to miss: grippier, non-felt soles are either ready or in the works for Simms, Patagonia, Cloudveil and others; Patagonia has a new patent-pending merino-wool booty; and utility-focused waders arrive from Patagonia and Orvis, along with everyone seeming to recognize the need for waders that don’t require a solid lining with $100 bills to stay waterproof.

When the show opens in a couple of hours we’ll begin taking detailed notes on all new products, so be sure to check back regularly during the next three days.