Besides the (obvious) obsession for flytying and flytying I have a passion for my day-job as a web-developer: backend systems, metadata and data-driven application development. I have earlier made a database for norwegian hiphop albums and when I this winter sat down to figure out my next rod: a #5 weight for going after trout here in Norway I discovered that besides the obvious opinions about rods and what you should get, there were no good databases and overviews of the different #5 rods out there!
There are some sites out there, but a lot of them are not updated, and they didn’t have the features I wanted to compare and search for rods! So: I found out that the domain flyrods.org was available and started developing a new site to collect all the information about all the companies and rods I could!
Now: the site I’m launching today don’t have all the companies out there, neither does it have all the rods, but so far I’ve collected 2300+ rods and put the information up there to be browsed and searched through. I wanted to get the site up and running as soon as possible so that I could get some feedback from people that are interested in this kind of information (and you know that a lot of flyfishers can be obsessed about numbers and statistics!).
The main feature of the site will be the search where you can search up companies/length/weight and then go on to compare them side-by-side to see how different rods. The search engine is now in its first version, but I’m interested in feedback on how it works and maybe how it can be improved. The important work up until now have been to gather information, then I’ll continue to improve the site.
All the information is gathered from the rod companies web sites, this means that the site now mainly consists of current rods, and not earlier editions or companies that don’t exist any more. This is information I would love to get my hands on so that I can get it up there together with the rods that are available! I’m currently going over the rods and companies to start adding videos/links to reviews and images, but for this I also need input from the companies that produces these rods (please contact me if you produce rods and can provide images!)
Again: this is the first version, there are companies missing and the site might have some problems here or there, but do let me know if you find anything missing or if something doesn’t work!
