We've just received shipment of some of the hatch fly reels. Personally I wanted a high quality reel to team up with my Scotts especially for Saltwater fly work this summer. I spent some time investigating the right product and time and time again I came up with Hatch.

You may not have heard of them as they've only been on the market for 2 1/2 years and all they do is one reel series. The reels are all made in the US and the guys who make them know what they're doing both with a fly rod and with a CNC machine. For me this is critical, remembering at Manic we are going out of our way to only work with companies that share the same passion for the sport as we do and the same no compromise attitude to creating the right products.

Essentially how the range works is there are 4 sizes of reel 3-Plus (3, 4, 5 Lines), 5-Plus (5 ,6 ,7 Lines), 7-Plus (7 ,8 , 9 Lines) and 9-Plus (9, 10, 11, 12 Lines). All of these models come in either black or silver. The silver models come with a choice of red, blue or green contrast inserts, the black are contrasted with silver.

Anyway he're a few pics and the reason's why we've decided to run Hatch.

The entire body is machine cut from one block of solid Aircraft quality aluminium. I know we've all heard that before but the big difference here is the fact that the unique drag cylinder and reel foot are machined onto the body.

The massive drag which is a built up of a combination of  stacked rulon and stainless washers is housed in a sealed unit in the reel cage. The adjustment range is massive.

See what I mean about the reel foot being machined as part of the one piece frame. No more searching for a screw driver or wabbly reel seats.

The machining and finish quality on the hatch reels is second to none. There is no spool slop, no rattling handles or reel feet.

Bring on summer !!!

I fished yesterday morning with Tim Healy from Barry Greigs Sports in Turangi. Ok, to be honest the fishing wasn't great but I really did enjoy spending some time on the water with a guy who knew what he was doing.

Tim Healy early morning on the Tongariro

As far as a fishing report was concerned, the river was high a clearing we worked hard and picked up a few fish between us in a couple of hours of fishing. More importantly this is what I enjoyed from Tim.

1. Tim's key to sucesss on the Tongariro was being able to cast long lines and get good long drifts maximising the time his flies were in a good fish catching zone. The secret to handling heavy tongariro nymphs is high line speed a tight loops, you'll see in the picture below this is exactly what Tim was able to do.

2. Tim read the water well, he started his first drifts in close and then worked his way further into the river. Especially early in the morning fish often sit in shallower water closer to the bank so as always Fish Your Feet First.

3. Lastly Tim knows the river well. To do this you have two options, firstly you could do what Tim does and go and fish the river every morning or you could do what I do and next time your in town go and ask Tim where to go .... he may even be able to sell you the flies that are working.

Check out Tim's Tongariro Fishing Report and if you have time to get down there in the next couple of weeks do it, the river is clearing and as the flows lower you'll find the fishing get better and better.

Tim's key to success is being able to cast long lines on the Tongariro to get nice long drifts

At Manic we're proud of what we do but we also know there are a bunch of other guys out there doing a damn good job of promoting the sport of fly fishing and pioneering the next phases of our sport. One of these key people is Nick Reygaert. Nick was involved in the making of Trout Bum Diaries, Search Tahiti and a host of other video projects; he also writes for Fly Life Magazine and NZ Trout Fisher and at the end of all of that he finds time to run the Fly Fishing Film Festival in NZ and Australia.

Above all else the thing I like about him is he knows what he's doing and whatever he does he does it well.

Anyway we're pleased to let you know that Nick is well and truly an Airflo man and that we'll be supporting him in any way we can.

If you want to learn more about Nick and Gin Clear then check out his website www.gin-clear.com

And you'll also need to check out the film festival details, last year I missed out because it was booked out so buy your tickets early;

Airflo as a brand has always been synonomous with fly lines and understandably so. At Manic one of our intensions was to build the Airflo brand to include other fly fishing products, to start the ball rolling we've added three series of fly reels. The higher end series in the offering is the new machined aluminium Airlite reels. I added these to the range having been impressed with the original prototypes I had seen earlier in the year. Last week we received our first shipment of these reels and I was totally gob smacked. The reels are even more impressive than the original prototypes, this is what I liked.

1. The V-shaped spool creates plenty of capacity for backing and what's really cool is when you view the reel from the side you can see the backing showing. This looks especially cool when you use bright coloured backing.

2. The drag is nicely sealed away, it certainly wont be waterproof however the seal will stop grit getting into the drag.

3. As the name implies the Airlite is extremely lightweight especially for a bar stock reel. This is particularly good for balancing out the new lightweight rods on the market.

4. Most importantly this reel is stunning, the v-shaped spool really stands out from a design view point and the contrast red drag plate totally sets the reel off.

Anyway check out the photo's and see what I mean.