Four Months with my Swift Epic 686, plus Backstory

Introduction

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for August, 2015.  There were two historically significant events at this temporal nexus:

1. The Fading Angler spends a day with a guide in southern Minnesota's Driftless Area.  Guide Dan brings along a 4 weight TFO Finesse rod that seems to mesh better with my casting "skills" than the stiff 7-foot Sage Approach 3-weight I brought along.
2. The Fading Angler gets a chance to test-cast the brand-spanking new Sage MOD at Headhunters Fly Shop in Craig, MT.  The MOD is Sage's "moderate action" rod, sitting somewhere between the actions of the fast ONE and "advanced slow-action" CIRCA models.  Very quickly, something amazing happens:  I am able to shoot line at the conclusion of forward casting strokes.  I'd never been able to do this before.

This was chronicled in more detail here on the blog last year: Fly Angler: Headhunter or Head Case?

Being a scientist (at least in my own head), I immediately implemented a new top-secret operation and intelligence protocol:

Fading Angler's Cientific Exploration Purporting to Learn Actual Nowlegde and Truth, better known by the codename FACEPLANT.

(You might want to grab a coffee, Diet Mountain Dew, pint of beer, or a double bourbon before continuing. Oh, and a grain of salt.  Bring the shaker...)

The Great Folks at Sage

Mrs. Fading Angler and I took a quick weekend getaway trip to the Seattle area in October last year.  No real purpose, just a chance to get away for a few days.  We did have a few items on the "might do" list:

• Visit Red's Fly Shop, a 2 hour drive from Seattle, east to Ellensburg then a few more miles south along the Yakima River.  The idea was to scout for future fishing water, and see if they might have any wading boots for her to try on.
• Lunch and beverages at the Pyramid brewpub across the street from Safeco Field.
• A ferry ride out to Bainbridge Island for a quick visit with some folks at Sage.

After lunch, a flight of beer samples, and a pint of the selected barley juice, we waited in line to board the ferry out to Bainbridge.   We've taken probably 20 ferry rides around Puget Sound.  So far, the novelty has not faded.  We arrived in short order at the Sage (Far Bank Enterprises) HQ and hoped that we'd get the same hospitality as we received on our first visit and factory tour in 2012.  We were not disappointed.

Fly Angler: Headhunter or Head Case?

First Thing first: Definitions, for the reader without a background in flyfishing slang.  "Head Hunting" refers loosely to the practice of pursuing fish that are poking their heads out of the water in the act of eating something floating on the surface.  In the context of fishing, it has nothing to do with attempting to separate the brainless head of another human being who lacks the courtesy to avoid the water you've been fishing for nearly an hour as they shirtlessly float through in their rental raft with a Coors Light in each hand.  (I nearly mentioned something about these rafts being slightly less unwelcome when one or more passengers are bikini-clad, but that's not always true and might be offensive to some, so I avoided mentioning it.)  Or the other angler who's positive that the only fish in the river are in your immediate proximity.  There's a special DSM-V classification for these poor souls: accute rectocranial impaction.

Next Thing: Declarations.  I go through phases of obsessive and compulsive fascination with flyfishing, especially fly rods and fly lines.  Currently, I'm stuck in the gravitational vortex of a black hole with "moderate action" rods at its heart.  This trajectory was triggered by two things that recently coincided: