Orvis Photo Contest: Fame & Fortune for Pics

Submit your best fly fishing photos to the Orvis Fly Fishing Photo Contest for a shot at a Helios fly rod outfit or a $1000 Orvis gift card. In addition to the loot, your shot will grace the cover of a future Orvis fly fishing catalog, the angling equivalent of being on the cover of The Rolling Stone. Send your best stuff because I fully intend to "buy five copies for my Mother" if my submission gets picked.

Orvis Fly Rods: If we told you, we'd have to kill you...

When my Great Grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt Burleson handed me my first stone fly nymph and fly rod 3o+ years ago, I wonder if he would have ever thought that the rod I got for my 41st birthday would be made of the same military grade material used in Predator drones? I won't even go into what he would have thought about unmanned machines flying about on their own and shooting things. Techie tome Wired Magazine features a look at Orvis' Helios fly rod:

The "stuff" is unidirectional carbon fiber — not the ubiquitous carbon mesh found everywhere from dashboards to tennis racquets, but a new superlight variety that was, until recently, a highly classified concoction. I start to copy information from a label when Stone barks, "Don't write down the manufacturer's name," and slams the door shut.

It's not just trade secrets he's protecting — it's national security. The composite is used in Predator drones and spy satellites for the US military. Stone, along with colleagues at the outdoors supplier Orvis, use it to build a fly-fishing rod. Called Helios, its story began nearly three years ago when Stone, Jim Lepage, and another man — so entrenched in top-secret contracts that nobody would even tell me his name (we'll call him Deep Trout) — set out to build the ultimate rod: lighter than anything ever made but strong enough to land the big one.

Photo: The Orvis Company

Orvis Helios Wins Field & Stream's Best of the Best

For the second year in a row Orvis has taken Field and Stream Magazine's award for best fly rod. The Orvis ZG Helios fly rod, which is known for light weight and castability, marks a true innovation in the world of high end fly rods.

From their press release:

While noting the gains Orvis made in creating the world's lightest fly rod, Field & Stream editors were equally impressed by the added distance and accuracy a Helios rod gives to one's cast:

"We tried to break it on big fish, but couldn't. We cast everything from dry flies to big streamers. It dropped midges on the money in ponds and busted foam hoppers through heavy winds, proving to be responsive and accurate on the light side, and burly in the down-and-dirty.

"And it cast well. In fact, we observed 10-to20-foot distance gains unfurl within a few casts for almost everyone. A 5-weight feels like a 3-weight; a 10-weight feels like an 8-weight. In the end, we were convinced you get what you pay for, and we couldn't quite say that about some other rods."

Read the entire release.