Part of me hesitated writing this but because of the number of inquiries we continue to get on a daily basis we thought we should let you know what is going on… which is this.

We went live with our new website 5 months ago and our website traffic jumped by over 30% but so too did the number of calls and emails asking when the ecommerce part of our site will be live. To our surprise the biggest stumbling block has been the difficulty in getting the right information in a downloadable format from our suppliers. We require high resolution images and product descriptions in a CSV file and when we have approached the majority of our suppliers most have said, “Ummm, we don’t know what a CSV file is. Just go to our website and start cutting and pasting.” This would be okay if we were only dealing with a few hundred items but we have over 10,000 items that we have to transfer into our system so the cut and paste route doesn’t quite cut it (no pun intended).

Well, after a bit of insistence from us many of our suppliers have stepped up to the plate and we have downloaded a considerable amount of product into the site and we are now in the process of screening it for mistakes to prepare for a staged launch that will feature a limited number of products from a select few suppliers. Our ecommerce team is continuing to work feverishly (they have even been threatened with not getting dessert) and we hope to surprise everyone by actually having the site live in the coming weeks.

No one is more anxious than us to have the site live and we hope that you will like what we have done when you finally get a peek!

Ooohh Baby – it’s a work night and it’s late… Better put the coffee on extra strong tomorrow morning! We finished loading the new categories onto our new ecommerce site tonight (Monday) and we will start loading inventory tomorrow. It looks like we are going to load fly fishing reels first and make sure everything is kosher before moving on to other categories such as fly fishing rods and fly fishing waders and will eventually make our way to the fly tying materials… Hold on – why do I keep typing “fly fishing” in front of everything ? Oh ya, I am now into the habit of typing “fly fishing” onto the site for search optimization so we appear on fly fishing searches for people in fly fishing looking for information on fly fishing rods and fly fishing reels and fly fishing waders and… Holy Andy – enough already!

Sorry…

This past weekend Aimee and I ended up driving to Port Stanley with her mother for an afternoon and I had the opportunity to check out The Kettle Creek Inn. I don’t know about you, but I think you get a true indication of the kind of service an Inn or Hotel provides when you pop in completely unannounced to check it out. From a business perspective I recognize this is completely unfair but I do it anyway because if we are going to recommend a place to our customers I want to know that we are sending them to a place that will jump through hoops. What I have found is that the good places are not phased by this kind of thing but the mediocre and bad places stick out like sore thumbs.

So, what did I find? Like the other members of Ontario’s Finest Inns that I have visited, the Kettle Creek Inn is a place I would not hesitate to recommend. Although it is small Inn with only 10 guest rooms and 5 suites they are spacious and very clean and the Inn has a nice, intimate feel to it. I was impressed with the small pub at the entrance to the Inn and, having never visited Port Stanley, I was also pleasantly surprised with the town and have it on my list to places to come back and visit.

The reason I wanted to check out the Inn is because we are scouting places in Ontario, New York, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania for potential destinations to which we will be organizing trips for the members of our Fly Fishing Club in 2011. Watch our blog for details in the coming months… and make sure you sign up to become a member of the Fly Fishing Club so you can join us!

We received the following update from our friends at Nervous Waters and thought we would pass it along…

Abaco Lodge in the Bahamas always had a lot of bonefish but we have seen an abnormal amount of large fish these last two months. Our standard 2-5 pounders are still there but the percentage of large fish, those in the 5-9 pound class, has been up substantially. The fall fishing has been nothing less than spectacular here in Abaco. Very few fronts moved in and the stable weather meant great fishing across the board. Comfortable days on the water and cooler nights by the fire have made a wonderful start to the season.

The Bahamas is bonefishing at its best but we aren’t limited to the gray ghost. The juvenile tarpon fishing this fall was predictable and sustainable, with us jumping more than 60 fish. We are working on improving the hook up to landed ration but there is nothing like hooking a 25lb tarpon in 12” of water on an 8 wt! We also had a verified snook sighting – the first we know of in the Abacos. Some of the more exciting fish on the flats are those that can bite back – shallow water shark fishing on a fly might just be the most underrated fishing we have. Lemons, blacktips, bonnet heads, and spinners are found throughout the Marls and if you put the time in you can convince them to take an artificial without chum. We use a floating line and large poppers leading to spectacular takes as the whole head comes out of the water to eat the fly. It is all about the bite! Amazing takes and exciting fishing, we think everyone should be rigged for this every day.

For more information on this lodge check out the Travel Section on our website. Remember, if you book this or any other destination through our store you pay the same as booking direct with the lodge but we give you a gift certificate worth 10% of the trip value to spend in our store !

We are on the prowl for new destinations to add to our list of recommended fly fishing lodges so if you have visited a place that you think more people should know about, please send us an email. Location is not a consideration but the quality of the lodge definitely is. Quality is of course a subjective measure and we all use different criteria to benchmark our likes and dislikes. Just as a university degree is not a measure of intelligence but rather of formal education, we also realize that cost is not a measure of the quality of a lodge, only of price. The common thread we promote in the lodges on our travel section is quality. For some anglers a quality destination is the combination of a plane ride, gourmet food and a unique experience. For others it is a destination that is within easy driving distance of home, great fishing and decent food. Older anglers sometimes choose a fishing destination for the quality of the meals and drink while younger anglers sacrifice comfort for the quality of fishing. Quality means different things to different people.

So, let us know your thoughts. We would like to get more destinations on our program so we can pass along our 10% travel incentive to more anglers! And by the way, if you would like to go to a destination not currently on our travel program we will be more than happy to make a call on your behalf to see if they would like to participate – even on a ‘case by case’ basis. Worse thing that will happen is they say “no” but the best thing is they might say “yes!”, and we can then put your money back in your pocket!