Well....
I was at the Southfield Expo all day today and was fortunate enough to meet many of the sponsers and some who plan on attending the clave.
I talked to several people. The most intersting figure who stood out the most to me was Simon Gawesworth from Rio. I told him I would meet him up there and was I glad I did. He had a wealth of information realted to spey fishing and the lines he helped develop. I learned alot about the Grand Spey, Midspey and the Windcutter spey. I got to take a look at the specs and the grains, and see what they were developed for. I was really intersted in finding out what tips/heads or whatever was best for our region with our smaller streams. He gave me some T-14 line to use, which sinks at 14" per second. I told him I was fishing on Sunday morning and he told me to try it out and let him know if it works out ok. I also talked to Matt Supinski, Kevin Feenstra, the crew at Great Lakes Flyfishing Co. and Craig Harris. Everything looks good right now. I met Neil as well, we had a brief few moments and chatted some too.
I handed out flyers to several people, and I had to make more copies at the expo center since I ran out, they were going like crazy.
I did get to test the Sage 14'1" 9wt "Euro" and the 14' 9wt "Trad" as well as the 14'1" 7wt "Euro." The 9wt's were casted with a windcutter 9/10/11 and the 7wt a windcutter 7/8/9. The 14'1" 7wt is a meat stick, truly built more like an 8wt rod in my opinion. It casted the head easily, well into the running line. The 14'1" 9wt "Euro" was a faster rod, very easily casted the entire head, and picked it up with no problem. The 14' 9wt "Trad" was a sweet rod, and loaded into the butt. Had enough reserve power, but still couldn't perform as well as the Euro's in my opinion.
Clave it up!