TALES OF THE RISE
Ian Ainslie fills in some details on a useful fishing diary.
Have you seen the David Scholes diary notes from 1971 that are reproduced inside the cover of Macquarie River Reflections? I’ve always found reading other people’s diaries to be a bit eerie—like going through your mate’s fly vest, or your wife’s underwear drawer. You don’t feel completely at ease doing it, but it’s exciting because you’re seeing a very personal side of someone.
If you can relate to any of the above and find personal journals fascinating then Tales of the Rise is such a diary just waiting to be filled with snippets of information from your very own fishing trips. Where did you go? Which flies did you use? What was the weather like? Were there any hatches? Did you catch a fish? Add a photo or two and maybe a successful fly or make a note of that new leader recipe. In as little as a year’s time the information will be very useful and in thirty years time the next generation will be fascinated.
The book is spiral bound with plastic pockets for photos and flies, is nicely illustrated with all sorts of trouty things and has enough pages for about 200 entries —but that’s not all!
Tales of the Rise also comes with a CD which replicates the diary in electronic form. Once loaded onto your PC or Mac the program allows you to build up an electronic record of your fishing trips. The screen you see looks exactly like the paper diary. The interface is very simple to use and if you have a digital camera you can add as many photos as you like. There’s also an option allowing the photos to be viewed as a slide show.
There are search, print and email options. The latter works with the click of a button if your computer is connected to the Internet at the time. All you have to do is type in an email address, decide whether you want to include any photos and click send. The diary entry arrives in the body of the recipient’s email–so there is no worry about that person needing a copy of the program to read your trip report.
No details were supplied about the computer system requirements needed to run the program. I’ve successfully tested it on Macs running both OS9 and OSX and also a Windows PC running XP.