Matt Tucker

Well, that is the response I expected. However, I did make a cordial effort to contact William Joseph (albeit, I didn't give them much time before I uploaded to YouTube and posted on 3 forums). However, I still haven't gotten a response to date from my email (which is below). After reading above, I doubt that I will now. And I never expected them to do anything about it and was just looking to let the manufacturer and consumers know about the product. ======================== From: Matt Tucker [mailto:XXX@XXX.COM] Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 1:21 PM To: 'info@williamjoseph.net' Cc: Brent McClane (XXX@XXX.COM) Subject: Thank You WilliamJoseph Importance: High To Whom It May Concern: I would like to share with you a little video we shot while fishing the White River in Arkansas this past weekend, regarding your Gear Bag boat product. I hope that you will forward this to all in your company as well as your manufacturer as I trust you will agree that this is unacceptable. Thanks, Matt Tucker www.OzarkChronicles.com ============================== To follow-up from Dominic's response above in Ken Morrow's post, it may be that the gear bags both Brent and I recieved were "pre production" models and they knew the issues with these bags. But, I personaly doubt it and that seems like a canned response for when a product fails and it was charity or field testing or prostaff. Everything we recieved from WJ was packaged probably how you would see it on the shelf with all the product packaging / tags / etc. If memory serves me correctly, these bags were on the market before we participated in Trout Bum, so the pre-production field testing probably was already done (They were in the WJ Catalog that came with all the gear they sent......I would assume that product testing would be done before you put a product in your catalog for sale). We recieved our bags in July of 2004. If they were pre-production bags, why didn't WJ ask for feedback from their product for our 10day TB trip. They asked us what we wanted and then ended up sending just about 2 of a bunch of things. They were great. Remember, it wasn't just my bag that got soaked through. Just on this post WJ is 3 for 3 (My bag, Brent McClane's Bag, and Ken's bag per his post above) on not living up to its marketing. Hard to believe that all 3 were pre-production models. Sitting at a local bar after the Ozark Fly Fisher meeting last night with a few other members I think I was persuaded to purchase another one of these bags and put it through some tests......unless the ones on Sierra are factory seconds and those are known to have issues as well. For the record, I am leaning towards the Patagonia Great Divide bag..............as a replacement. --Matt Tucker

Ken: I didn't look closely at the review of the bag, I probably could have found a different one if I did, and not thrown you into the fire. Definitely wasn't misled by your review. The bag is sexy and has worked flawlessly since i have had it until Saturday, but never really tested out the waterproof function. The thing that really bothers me about this is I have taken countless trips with this bag on the back of my pontoon boat and in the bottom of other boats. It was my primary protection for my Nikon D70, Nikon 80-200 2.8 lens, and SB600 flash as well as other essential fishing gear. For some reason, I didn't bring my photo gear with me on this trip (probably becasue of the call for storms they were making) but if I had it would have definitely gotten wet for sure. The only thing I know for sure is I will most probably be looking to purchase a new boat bag before my next trip. --Matt Tucker

I spent this weekend fishing the White River in Arkansas. It was the maiden voyage of my drift boat, so it was a very pleasurable experience. But there were some important lessons to be learned after the completion of this trip. The biggest was that one should never take gear advertised as waterproof as gospel. It rained a pretty good clip this weekend as we floated the 7 mile trip from the Dam to White Hole access on the White River. Before the rain, we had pulled over to the bank and McClane and I secured the gear as best we could to keep it as dry as possible. One of the tools we thought we would use was our William Joseph Gear Bags (honestly it is a VERY SEXY bag), as they are supposed to be waterproof and float with 45lbs of gear. So we zipped everything up and took off down the river. After about 4 hours of additional fishing and off and on thunderstorms we reached our take-out. Upon loading the boat on the trailer and securing everything to be towed, I was surprised to see standing water in the bottom of my WJ Gear Bag. The bag had sat on the rear deck of the drift boat , behind me and to my left, for the entire trip. It is an elevated rear deck, so the bag itself wasn't sitting in any water (just the wet deck). Everything inside the bag was soaking wet -- flyboxes, GPS Unit, FRS Radio, Headlamp, extra reel, fishing license, my wallet, EVERYTHING. You can see a video of just how wet everything was in my bag by viewing this video I uploaded to YouTube ( ). Even though I didn't pay for this product (both McClane and I were given these to use during our 2004 Trout Bum trip), I still feel that this product didn't produce as marketed and wanted to let everyone know about it. I also will admit that the bag truly is only supposed to have one waterproof compartment.....that one didn't work either. The bag is a sharp looking bag, and I really like the looks and storage capacity and layout. However it just didn't keep my gear dry as written about in several reviews (Click Here For an example review), and I wanted to warn everyone before they just assume that something that is marketed as "waterproof" sometimes might not always be. I sent an email to William Joseph and included the video that I uploaded to YouTube. I don't know that I expect a response from them, I just wanted them to know about thier product. --Matt Tucker

Randy: Good tips on the competitions. I have never competed in one, but have followed them for awhile now and am a real big fan of them (hope maybe one day to see them more frequently). Did you go to the North Carolina trial a couple weeks ago (at least i think it was a couple weeks ago) to practice? I see you made the finals from Colorado.....CONGRATS MAN! --Matt Tucker

Chuck: Nice photos man! Your number 2 photo in your first post is the pic of the litter in my opinion, the composition really draws you in. The 5th photo is very nice too. --Matt Tucker

Wise....I thought you were rowing me........hell, I guess I will bring my Hyde too.... --tucker

With landscape photos such as this one you have all the time in the world to set up your shot as the subject isn't going to move. The lighting may change or someone might walk into your frame but the landscape isn't moving that fast. So take your time on landscape shots and ALWAYS shoot off of a tripod or some form of super stable platform. During landscape shots I touch my camera as little as possible once i compose the scene in the viewfinder. I use a shutter release remote to trigger the shot once all my settings are dialed in. The water is pretty simple in all you are doing is slowing down the shutter speed and keeping your subject in focus and letting everything else around it continue to move. But you need to keep the camera completely still for these types of shots. Shutter speeds can also be reduced and a photographer can pan with thier subject to create a motion effect as well -- but in the case of water you want to keep the camera still. Some shoots the shutter is open for 10 seconds some only 1 second but all can create varying senses of motion. With regards to the coloring of this photo, you need to wait for the right lighting and understanding your camera settings (specifically white balance in this case). This shot was actually shot around 9am or maybe a little later but it was in an area not brightly lit. In my opinion, colors are more vivid when not in direct sun light. I did use photoshop to bring out some of the colors, but again I don't know how to use photoshop very well so that I believe was minimal. Hope this makes sense Dan and thanks for the comments guys. Let's see some other photos. --matt tucker

This was the topic on another forum that I participate in off and on, and it made for some interesting reading and viewing if enough people participate. I am headed down to the White River this weekend, but will check the thread when I get back, and can't wait to see some photos. Regarding my photos, all of the shots below were shot with a Nikon D70 and most were taken in 2005 (the year I really put down my fly rod and chased subjects with a camera). Most of the shots were lightly edited in photoshop, but I don't have that great of a knowledge in it to really alter much of anything and all were resized for the web with smaller file sizes. In 2005 I was shooting in .jpeg format, but now I shoot in RAW exclusively. So, here are five of my favorites in no particular order. Fish Hard, Matt Tucker Photo # 1 This photo was shot at Maremac Spring Park and is the first photo I ever shot where I think I actually ended up with what I had hoped to end up with. This is also the first photo I ever felt worthy enough to print in large format. Photo # 2 This photo was shot in 2005 and is of a turkey that walked up on me at Lone Elk County Park in St. Louis, MO. Photo # 3 Out of all my photos this shot was complete luck. I happened to be driving through the county park and looked out the window and saw a deer. I parked the car, grabbed my camera gear and hurridly tried to get a closer look. I didn't have a decent prime lens at the time (still don't have the 300mm 2.8 that I so desparately need) but this was captured when I really thought it as too dark and required some photoshop work to lighten the image up. You gotta love big bucks shedding velvet. Photo # 4 This is my first silouhette image that I shot worth a darn, and will always have a place in my book. Silouhette's are alot tougher than they look because of the sun placement and background. The subject is an elk at Lone Elk County Park near St. Louis. Photo # 5 This is another phot from Lone Elk County Park (there is a trend here, and if you are a photographer you need to make a trip to this place) of a buck I followed quite alot in 2005 and 2006. I had attempted to shoot this buck's antler growth through the season for a calendar, but couldn't get him shedding his velvet or him dropping his antlers. I put alot of time towards this buck in 05 and 06........he is truly a giant.

For night time photos, if your camera doesn't have that great of a flash you can often use a flash light (Shined off of the subject you are shooting) to provide enough light to focus and shoot from. A couple of other areas to look at, even on Point & Shoot cameras, is to check your manual settings. For night-time shots you may want to try and increase your ISO setting (which essentially is your camera's sensitivity to light) and descrease your shutter speed (which allows your camera to capture more light). You also may want to check your white balance settings (some point and shoots allow you to change this) and set it to "flash". Your camera may have a generic night-time setting (might be a picture of a moon or something) and try setting it to that and taking a few photos. the last thing to try would be to mess with your camera's onboard flash settings to see what helps and what doesn't help. Obviously lights while night fishing, isn't always the smartest move but for photos they are generally a neccessity unless you can provide a stable camera base (e.g. tripod), remote shutter release, and about 30 minutes of shutter exposure. --Matt Tucker

Thanks guys. Lookin' forward to participating.

You can fill in the blank of my Topic Title (even if you don't know me).... I have been lurking on Phil's board for quite some time now, off and on over several years. While I don't know if I have ever met Phil in person, he has been more than a nice guy over the years to me via email or online and feel like I have known him for awhile. I won't bore you guys with the A/S/L routine, but I live near St. Louis and try and get on the water as often as possible -- more then some, less than others. I also like to tie flies and am a passionate outdoor photographer (i come from the dark side...Nikon). Alot of the guys on this site I know, some I do but won't claim to publicly. Lookin' forward to sharing fishing stories and photos with you guys and reading some of your posts. I don't get down to Taneycomo nearly enough, but try and get out with my fly rod or camera as often as possible. I am headed down to the White this weekend with a couple of guys that post here from time to time. Fish Hard, Matt Tucker

Because there are two sides to every story, what exactly did this Moose character allegedly do?