Viking Lars | Saturday, 6 February 2021
As fly fishers eye protection is extremely important - and yet and more often than not see fellow fly fishers without any eye protection. I’ve hit my self in the head with a fly a few times - a couple of times in the neck (once with a weighted nymph - have you got any idea how much that hurts?) and a few times on the more critical side. Once under the chin, where a double salmon hook was buried so deep that I had to go to local hospital to get it removed. A a few years ago, where another double hook (maybe I should just stop using them) hit me on my cheek. Warning - blood if you click “Details”…
See - very dramatic, yes :-)!
As the picture shows the fly hit not far below my eye, so I would have been fine, but trust me, I *was* wearing my sunglasses, because I always do. Always… For protection, because it’s pleasant and of course, because everyone looks cooler in a pair of sunglasses. Even at night (as in in the dark) I wear glasses - just a pair of cheap old (and not very cool, but it doesn’t matter because it’s dark) pair of cycling glasses that came with both tinted and clear lenses. Just wear them.
And on the subject of glasses… I have the clear ones and the brown ones i the PoD. And I have an additional pair in yellow for overcast days and evenings. The tinted ones are polarised of course - to take off the glare for the water’s surface, which can be straining on your eyes, and to better be able to spot fish. Some glasses are photochromic, which means that they darken and lighten slight as light intensifies or the opposite. These are very nice on lakes or in the salt. But they are slightly annoying in environments similar to on the above picture. The picture is from Norway (River Gaula) and in deep canyon-like environments like these, the photochromic lenses often “get confused”. If you look up, they darken, and then they’re a little too dark when you look down again, and the opposite. So, I simply have the two, brown and yellow, and they’re “static”.
Have a great weekend!
Lars