"snakefiddler" wrote in message
...
anyone try to fly out of the country lately with their fishin gear? any
major hassles?

snake

Yeah, this past summer I had a truckload of flights that I carried fly gear
on:

Kinshasa (FIH) - Brussels (BRU)
BRU-Amsterdam (AMS)
AMS-Bristol, England (BRS)
BRS-LON
LON-MSP
MSP-PHX
PHX-SEA
SEA-AMS
AMS-Stockholm (STO)
STO-Umea, Sweden (UME)
UME-STO
STO-BRU
BRU-FIH

On all of these flights, I carried my 3-piece 6/7 wt in its tube. I also
carried my portable 5 wt, fly gear (including flies) and some spare hooks in
a carry-on bag. Every single flight x-rayed my bags, on almost every single
flight, the inspection guy made some sort of appreciative comment about the
fly gear, like 'what kind of rod do you use?' or 'catching any good ones?'
or 'do you tie your own flies?'. And on almost every single flight, I was
allowed on board with no problem at all...the stewardesses even put the rod
in the first class closet in some cases.

The only exception was the MSP-PHX flight, where they refused to allow the
rod on and I had to check it as excess baggage. This flight was a connecting
flight from London, with the same airline and on the same day. However, the
inspectors were very firm in their refusal to allow it on board, even though
it had stickers clearing it as hand luggage from 5 other flights on that
same airline within that month.

--riverman