8 New Fly-Fishing Trappings We Love

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Puppies. Music. Days spent floating on a river with trout or smallmouth bass sipping surface flies. We all agree these things make our lives better. Getting there and having everything operate as smoothly as possible is the challenging part. Here are eight new, drool-worthy products that will help make any day on the water—or even a day spent tying flies—just a little better.

Turtlebox  Gen 2 Portable Speaker

We don’t condone playing music on the water when you might disturb others, but when you are paddleboarding a lake with no one around, on a flats skiff watching for a string of tarpon, scanning for redfish in the bayou, or drifting a lonely river, tunes can make a day of fishing even better. I spent many days floating the Juniata River for smallmouth bass with the Turtlebox Gen 2 this summer, and because it is 100% waterproof it can survive dunkings, mud, rainstorms, dogs, and fish slime. It’s a regular component in my NRS raft alongside a Yeti cooler and a box of flies.

The booming speaker pumps out 120 decibels so you can hear it over the sound of your outboard when you are running, or you can play it quietly enough to still hear fish slurping mayflies at the surface of a lake. The battery gives you 20+ hours of playtime—that’s a whole weekend of music for most people­­—and it also has a USB-C outlet so you can charge your phone.

The rubber carry handle is indestructible, as is the speaker grille, and it comes with stainless steel tie-down anchors on both sides so you can strap it to your SUP upright on the large rubber feet that are designed to grip boat decks.

The Turtlebox is good off the water as well, on the tailgate of your truck, camping, or in your own backyard. And you can wirelessly connect two Gen 2 Turtlebox speakers for true left/right stereo imaging to get portable outdoor audio quality. —Ross Purnell

$399 | scheels.com

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Outcast Boats  PAC 1150

The new Outcast PAC 1150 is an 11.5-foot American-made two-person raft with a sturdy DRE (Down River Equipment) custom fishing frame that includes a dry box that also serves as the rower’s seat; a level, metal no-skid casting deck; a lean bar with a line apron; and an internal anchor system. There are three separate AIREcell chambers with Leafield C7 valves. It’s sturdy, roomy, and comfortable to fish out of, and nimble. If it’s just you and your buddy for the day, this is a perfect boat. With a beam of 66.5" and tube diameter of 18.5" this “small” raft has a big capacity of 750 pounds and can handle the burliest fishing river. The PAC 1150 weighs 190 pounds, so you can certainly use unimproved access points to get to lightly fished areas, but you will need a trailer or a raised platform for the bed of your truck to transport it.

$6,999 | outcastboats.com

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Dyna-King  Barracuda Deluxe

Ron Abby started Dyna-King in Cloverdale, California, and three generations of his family have worked to produce functional, beautiful vises that allow you to tie with precision.

I bought my own Dyna-King Barracuda in 2000, and 23 years later it’s still performing flawlessly. There’s nothing else I need in a vise.

In 2022, Mayfly Outdoors—the same company that owns Abel, Ross, and Airflo—purchased Dyna-King, allowing Ron Abby to begin a full-time pursuit of steelhead in the Russian and other Northern California rivers. The precision-machining, customer service, and sales now all take place through the Mayfly Outdoors factory in Montrose, Colorado, where they continue Ron Abby’s tradition of craftsmanship. It’s the same place Abel reels are machined.

The new Barracuda Deluxe has all stainless steel construction except for high-grade brass knobs, jaws of hardened tool steel, and precision ball bearings. The optional pedestal or C-clamp vise allows for easy height adjustment, and the 90-degree crank handle means you can wind on dubbing and hackle quickly and precisely. It comes with a spring-type material clip, bobbin hanger, and a notch-lock cam, which ensures that you exert the same amount of pressure on each hook. That’s the thing we love most about this tool—a fly-tying vise is meant above all to hold a hook, but unfortunately, some of them don’t do that very well. The notched jaws of the Dyna-King Barracuda lock hooks from #32 to 8/0 in place, and they never budge. —Ross Purnell

$695 | dyna-king.com

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Grundéns  Wayward Roll Top Backpack 38L

The best fishing often goes hand-in-hand with hellacious weather. Rainforest steelhead, winter tailwaters, springtime in the Rockies, or almost any week in the jungle will expose you and your gear to wet, sometimes torrential conditions.

Grundéns is a company known for keeping commercial fishermen working in places like the North Atlantic and Bering Sea. They used their foul-weather expertise to create a 100% waterproof carryall specifically for fly fishers. The Wayward Roll Top 38L Backpack is welded from 400-denier ripstop nylon coated with clear thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), has a comfortable compression-molded back panel for all-day use, two exterior mesh water bottle pockets, a rod tube lash system on each side, a secure interior mesh zipper pocket with a key clip, and for travelers, an internal padded laptop sleeve, so you can bring your work with you on week-long excursions to exotic locations. It’s perfect for a dry set of clothes, camera gear, your lunch, an insulation layer, passport and other travel documents, or anything else you need to protect from the elements.

$179.99 | grundens.com

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Gear Guide Green Award: RIO Products  Compostable Spool

Fly line manufacturers have been working for years to make longer-lasting, more durable fly lines. But there’s no reason that the spools the lines are sold on should last forever. Plastic fly line spools can theoretically be recycled, but many localities don’t recycle all plastics, and most plastic fly line spools end up in landfills.

To reduce this impact, RIO Products in the fall of 2023 began spooling all their fly lines on compostable spools that are made from 100% recycled newsprint. The material has already been used once, and can be recycled again—or with the help of some water, microorganisms, bacteria, and insects, these spools will deteriorate and decompose like other organic material, and return to the earth. You can bury these in your own vegetable garden or add them to your yard waste compost. They will be gone in a matter of months.

According to RIO, replacing the plastic spools will keep 20,000 pounds of plastic out the landfill per year, which is enough plastic spools to cover a football field. The two-part spools are shaped and function like traditional spools, and have a hole through the center to insert a spindle. We’ve used them and they work just as well as a plastic spool. They won’t help you catch any more fish, but ideas like this one  may help your children catch more fish.

tridentflyfishing.com

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Dr. Slick  Black Widow Razor Scissors

It’s the little things that make fly fishing special, and that’s especially true in fly tying, where a perfectly wrapped thread head, or tails canted at just the right angle don’t catch more fish, they just feel right. A good tool can bring the same pleasures.

Black Widow Razor Scissors from Dr. Slick are angled, and more ergonomic for precise cuts than a straight shaft, and they follow the contours of your hand. More important, when you want to pick them up, your thumb and forefinger slide through the loops—all you need to do is squeeze to pick them up. Flat scissors are more like trying to pick a dime up off the floor—there isn’t much to pinch. The scissors have an adjustable-tension serrated blade and are available as a 3.5" Arrow Scissor, 4" All Purpose Scissor, or a 4.5" Hair Scissor.

$38 | scheels.com

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Montana Casting Co.  Warm Springs Fly Rod

We love gear with a story behind it. And because the fly-fishing community is so tightly knit, we also love small, family-owned businesses—so there’s a lot to say about the homegrown Montana Fly Co.

Owner Scott Joyner built his first fly rod in 1994, and just a short while later he opened a fly shop in Four Corners, Montana. At that time, Scott and his best friend Craig were both guiding 200 days a year on Montana rivers. When they weren’t guiding, they were often together, duck hunting and fishing until one day Scott declined an invitation from Craig. That day, Craig was hit and killed by a drunk driver.

Scott’s world was turned upside down by the loss. He stopped guiding, stopped building fly rods, and sold his fly shop. He literally left it all behind and stopped fly fishing for half a decade. He couldn’t do it without Craig . . . until the day Scott’s own son turned 10, and asked his dad to teach him to fly fish.

Today Scott Joyner and his wife Catherine (Cat) own and operate Montana Casting Co. in Helena, Montana, and their adult son Staiger Joyner is in charge of research and development.

Montana Fly Co. has three different rod series named after different public  access sites in Montana: Warm Springs, Dearborn, and Craig. We fished the Warm Springs 4-piece rod. It’s named after a location on the lower Madison, but the gritty rod works well almost anywhere you can find blue collar trout from big rivers, to small streams in the mountains. We used the Warm Springs to catch native brook trout on a Pennsylvania spring creek, but it’s also right at home with westlope cutthroats in Montana’s Big Belt Mountains.

Oh, and the family-owned MCC does more than sell rods, they offer machined aluminum performance reels, a lightweight backpacking reel, fly lines, leaders—and all the other components of a perfect cast.

$750 | montanacastingco.com

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NRS  Approach 120

We love a lightweight raft that doesn’t need a trailer. With these two-person micro rafts you can comfortably create days where you make your own adventure without the need of a boat ramp. The new Approach 120 from NRS Fishing is 12 feet long and weighs 120 pounds, so you can pick it up and drop it into a lake or river almost anywhere within sight of the road.

With the release of the NRS Slipstream in 2022, NRS became a clear leader in micro raft design, but the new Approach takes it up (or down) a notch. First, it’s longer and narrower (49-inch width) than any other comparable raft on the market, so it fits neatly inside the bed of a pickup. The narrower profile is made possible by the tapered tube diameter, which is 16" at the widest point and 12" at the narrow end. These narrower tubes get you into smaller spaces, catch less wind, and make the craft easier to maneuver.

To improve buoyancy there is a 6-inch drop-stitch floor covered with a slip-resistant foam pad (compared to the 4-inch floor in many other rafts).

Another reason the Approach 120 is easier to row is the slot rail frame that easily adjusts so you can keep the weight in the boat balanced and move the oarlocks for better rowing performance. The seat platforms provide dry boxes and convenient external trays to keep everything organized inside the boat. The rest of the boat is just as slick, and shows that this isn’t just an inflatable raft, it’s a fishing machine. There is an internal anchor system—and an optional package that includes a 2:1 pulley system and Tornado anchor—a dual, two-direction rod holder that fits two 9'6" rods, and the molded front thigh hook even has cup holders. There are six handles and ten D-ring tie-down points, making this raft easier to carry or strap on the roof of your SUV. The four inflatable compartments have Leafield C7 valves.

$4,995 | nrs.com