Andrew Maslar arrived with a trout fly rod

Andrew Russell Maslar was born at Charlotte Memorial Hospital at 12:46 October 31: a Halloween baby. The Doctors were amazed to have such an exceptional delivery because he was born with a fly fishing rod in his hand. He was 7lbs 3 oz and 20 1/2 inches long.

Congratulations to his parents Steve and Carleen Maslar. By the way, he is not smiling in the picture because we told him it would be at least 3 years before he could cast a fly,

Trout University Website Approaches 1st Anniversary

Wow, the time has gone by so fast. We started the Troutu website in October of 2008 for the purpose of promoting catch and release trout fishing as a family sport. Our mission is to efficiently provide useful, relevant information and products to trout fishermen with all levels of experience; and our moto is "Spend a few minutes on the net, and put more trout in your net".
Our goal is to be the "go to" site for all levels of trout anglers.

Our staff grew by Professor Dan Farnsworth a Minnesota native who brings cold weather experience to the University and by Associate Professor Tom Rosenbauer who is Director of Marketing for Orvis Rod and Reels, and Brant Oswald who is a professional guide and writer as well as Director of Orvis West Coast Fly Fishing School.

For consulting, we are pleased to have Jim Casada who is the author of the award-winning books, "Modern Fly Fishing" and "Fly Fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park: An Insider’s Guide to a Pursuit of Passion". Jim has over 50 years of trout fishing in the Smoky Mountains National Park and he mixes humor, history and trout fishing into his writings.

We also have the entomology and fly fishing expertise of world famous fly fisherman James Marsh who has over 15 fly fishing DVDs available on our site. We are pleased to announce that we will soon be offering his line of Perfect Flies, flies so realistic, you can not distinguish them from the real alive insect!

During the past year, we have added hundreds of pages as well as several products to the site; and since November 2008, when we received our first visitor, we have been overwhelmed with almost 14,000 visits to the site.

We are not resting on our laurels, however, as we plan to add much, much more this coming year. Of course, we plan to make many improvements as well. Happy Anniversary to us!

Line winder to wind line on reels

I tried to find a good fishing line spool holder on the Internet, but I only found the flimsy suction cup models or the expensive ones like Berkley has to offer. By the way, the suction cup models are flimsy and dangerous. I had a pencil sharpener held up with a suction cup, and it started to fall, I caught it but ended up with a piece of pencil lead in my hand. It is still there after 2 years!

So Steve, being a mechanical engineer who loves to design things, designed a simple but effective line spooler. With its simplistic design, it can be very cost effective. Please take a look at it here.

A crazy Idea: Diving Streamers

My son, the mechanical engineer is forever coming up with new ideas. A friend of his has had great success trout fishing for big browns using diving lures. So Steve had a light bulb go off! He turned his attention to combining the best effects of lures with the best effects of flies, and he invented the Diving Streamer.

Often times especially in swift water, it is difficult to get just the right amount of weight attached to the streamer causing it to get to the desired depth and yet be light enough to cast effectively. With the revolutionary and very light weight lip, the streamer is propelled to the bottom of the stream. This Diving Streamer is being developed with the purpose of trout fishing, however, its application could be very effective in fly fishing for strippers, large mouth bass, smallies, etc.

Please send me your thoughts. Aside from looking like Jimmy Durante, is it worthy of additional testing and development or is it just crazy. jmaslar@bellsouth.net Here's Jimmy!

Fishing and camping in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Ema decided to go fishing with her gang over the weekend so she packed up her camper, and hooked it up to the car. I think she was inspired by the DVD on The Great Smoky Mountains National Park which just went on sale this week at the Trout University.

Oh, here she is just pulling away from her driveway. Looks like a very good load for that little purple car.

After taking a closer look of the loaded vehicle I think that she may have forgotten to take her fly fishing pole. I hope that it is on the other side of the car where it can not be see.

I would hate to see her car and camper if she packed for a week at the Yellowstone National Park which is a package of 2 DVDs that she purchased at the http://www.troutu.com/ also.

If she learns about all the other professional level instructional DVD's available at the Trout University DVD Listing she will become a devoted fly fishing angler.

Fly Fish Yellowstone National DVD Available

The Trout University staff have partnered with James Marsh world famous fly fisherman and videographer to bring you two new instructional DVD's including Fly Fishing Yellowstone National Park and Fly Fishing The Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Each instructional DVD package consists of two DVD's with over 2 hours of instructions and information. These are not "watch me catch fish" DVD's but actual teaching and instructing DVD's.

Weather Affects Your Trout Fishing

Yes, clouds and overcast days are definitely better than sunny bright days despite the difficulty in actually seeing the trout.

But, did you know that cloudy and overcast days actually affect the hatches and therefore the trout's eating habits? Learn about this and much more at the Trout University's latest intermediate class "Class 2051 How Weather Affects Trout". This class was inserted in the curriculum at the intermediate skill level since it will be useful very early in a fisherman's learning program.

RIP Mongo Bat

I did a full scale investigation to locate the Mongo Bat tooling. I talked to the old plant manager, salesman, shipping clerk and union steward, all to no avail. It appears that the tooling was the property of Mattel and they have no records that go back that far. It is very unlikely that there would be enough interest is resurrecting the Mongo Bat to warrant the capital required to build new molds. Good bye old friend!