Orvis Sandanona

Everyone could use some help when it comes to their favorite outdoor sports. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could actually get instruction on how to improve at what you love to do from top experts in the sport? If you fish or shoot, you can with Orvis.

Fly fishing and clay shooting in the gorgeous rolling hills of the Hudson River Valley are just a phone call or email away. Orvis endorses several facilities that can teach you how to correct your cast or sure up your shot. But Sandanona in Millbrook New York is the only facility that Orvis owns and operates itself. The instructors at this place are amazing. They can watch your cast and tell you exactly where you are making a mistake, and teach you methods on correcting that mistake so you can land that trophy trout.

With open ponds and babbling streams right there on the grounds for perfecting your cast; and a wide variety of shooting ranges to practice your shot from every angle imaginable. Pulling into the gravel road we were greeted by a deer scampering across the road. And as we left, two beautiful pheasant roosters shuffled past our car.

At Sandanona you are chauffeured around on big-tired off-road golf carts. Just cruising around their manicured facilities is a pleasure. The lodge where you begin and end your lesson has a retail store for your drooling pleasure and is beautifully decorated with trophies, antique fishing gear, ancient hardwood floors, and boatloads of rustic charm.

A 2-day course at Sandanona will run you $470 (see pricing here). But for that price you can get rid of some of those bad habits and afterwards there won’t be any excuses for losing that fish of a lifetime. J

1 comment May 22nd, 2008