The Quads Are Coming!

I will have several hollow built quads for sale over the next couple of months. The rod I really like is the quad version of my popular 8'4" 3 weight.

Spey Rod with Carbon Fiber Ferrules

This rod is a project I have been working on for about a year now. I started off with a trout rod using this form of ferrules and now I have employed them on this spey rod. My major objective is to save weight off rods that would normally be heavier. This is going out to a friend in Washington to use and get feedback from. I don't see myself making a lot of these rods (spey), but its fun to do something different than trout rods all the time.

Reel Seat Hardware

Well, the 2 wt demo didn't last long! The second person trying it out bought the darn thing. He loves light line rods and it was exactly what he was looking for.

I spent the morning cleaning the shop and organizing reel seats. I am not sure if I have enough hardware or not. I use two different types of reel seats. The hardware that you see in the box is what I use for my lightweight seats. They come with a Spanish Cedar insert. The nicer seats that I use are purchased from Bellinger or Snake Brand. I just received my first Buckeye Burl seat from Mike at Snake Brand and its stunning! I will definitely be ordering more from him.

I hope to have some photos up soon of my Spey rod with Carbon Fiber ferrules.

I am now up to about a 9 month wait.

A Couple of New Rods

Well, this weekend was a tough weekend on the building. I had most of Saturday to work, the wife had taken the kids out for the day. It didn't go as planned. I started working in the shop and I had some problems right off the go. After about an hour of problems I gave up. I went and did some other things around the house. When I came back to it I saw a rod in the corner of my workshop that I had put up sometime ago because of orders. I thought I would give it another go. It was a 8'1" 1 weight rod. I had broken the butt section doing some sloppy tests on it. So I rebuilt it. I am not real sure why or where someone might want a rod like this, but I thought it was fun to work within this length and weight. I taped guides on this morning and WOW! I really like this rod. It has a nice medium fast action and with a tip right at .058" it has enough strength to hold the line up right. I have been thinking about sending this out as a demo, but I keep coming back to the thought of just fishing it myself. Blank weight on this rod is 1.9 oz.

The top rod in the photo is the 8' 2 weight demo that I am just about to send out to the first person to try. I believe I have talked about this in previous posts about how excited I am about this rod. This is another rod that I hope to spend a lot of time with this summer. It has a medium fast action as well and tip size right at .062". The same parameters apply for this taper as the 1 weight. The finished weight on this rod was 3.19 oz.

A small paragraph about weights on a rod. I find it hard to stay much below 3.1 oz when using standard or even mini ferrules. The spanish cedar insert I have for these two rods is even lighter than using cork! I don't stabilize the cedar because it adds weight to it. I am under premise that it is lighter than cork and more durable than cork so it should be better to use than cork. If I am wrong on this it wouldn't be the first time. :-) I also have mastered the Carbon Fiber ferrule. I have done this with the spey rod I am working on. This also came on Saturday's break down. I am not going into details on what I have done, but I should be able to make a rod with fiberglass/carbon fiber ferrules in the 8'6" range and keep it right around 3 oz. I have a 8'6" 3 weight that I took out to the Henry's Fork this summer that I fished with on the river that I plan on retrofitting this rod with to see how it performs. I am very curious to get the spey rod out and see how it performs.

The last note about the fiberglass/carbon fiber ferrules is that I want these rods to be affordable. I don't want to make rods that cost thousandS of dollars. Its not who I am and what I want to do with my rods. I have told some people this story, but here it goes again. Before I started building I fished with nice rods. The nicest of these rods was several Mario Wojnicki rods. They were beautiful and great rods, but I never felt right fishing with them because of the cost. As a school teacher at the time if I broke one of them I would be out of a lot of money. I had even bought some very nice reels to go on them, like a Bogdan. I never felt right with that much money on a rod/reel. I hope I can stay true to this philosophy.

The Spey Rod Continues

I have been slowly working on my first spey rod. I have always liked the idea of alternative material ferrules. So I am going to make my first spey rod with fiberglass ferrules. Right now the design is an overlapping style. After I test this method if it holds up I will go with that or insert a spigot and try that method. I know of at least one other builder that does this so I will give it a try. I have went with a natural fiberglass color. I thought it would be interesting to hold it up to light and be able to tell if you have it securely in place.

With all of that being said I might still change my mind and go with Carbon Fiber. It looks better with the darker flamed rod, but it makes the rod so dang fast. Right now the blank weight of this rod with the fiberglass ferrules is 8.1 oz. I am not sure what a good weight of a Spey rod should be, but hopefully this is in the bottom tier.

I "HOPE" to have a ferrule system that I am happy with by this summer. I can use that on my trout rods and be able to produce longer and very light rods. My goal is still to produce a 5 weight rod that is at least 8' 6" and weigh under 3 oz.

I am also nearly done with a demo rod for my 8' 2 weight rod. I have had several questions about it being a true 2 weight. I wanted to get a demo complete so I could give people a chance to try it out and see what they think. I know that a lot of builders don't build 2 weight rods, but I really like this taper and think there is a future for it. I should have it ready in about 2 weeks if anyone wants to try it out.

Introducing the 8' 2 weight

After several prototype rods I have finally come up with a taper that I really like. In the pics below you will see an 8' 2 weight rod. With the cork grip it comes in right at 3 oz. One is able to cast 50-60 ft easily with this rod. It has a bigger tip size (.062) so that you can fish close in as well and keep control of the line with the tip of the rod. Right now I am working on a 8'3" 2 weight version. This rod is based off the 8'4" 3 weight taper platform.

I am still working on my first spey rod. I hope to have an update soon. I can see why builders charge so much for spey/salmon rods! On the next few orders I have I will be returning to dipping the rods. I believe that bigger rods = bigger flies should probably be dipped in order to preserve the cane against wear and tear. I stopped dipping some time ago because it added weight to the fly rod. However, in the case of bigger rods I think that longevity trumps saving a few tenths of an ounce.

New Year's Day fishing

I just got back from a trip to Colorado. I was anxious to do some winter fishing while taking the family on a ski trip. I was probably a little too anxious! The only real place to fish this time of year in the Taylor River area was at the DNR or what others call "The Hog Trough". The morning that we arrived to fish the temp was -5 degrees, by the time we left it had made it all the way up to 10 degrees. Talk about feeling warm.

In summer time you can sight fish to very large fish at this location. However, this time of year produces very low water flow so most of the fish move up into the area just below the tailwater and you are not allowed to fish to them. I was still able to catch some nice browns ranging from 16" to 20".

I got to test out my rod that I had recently built for myself in some pretty harsh conditions. As the eyelets froze up I would have to dip my rod in the water to get the line through. So my rod spent a lot of time submerged in the water. I had left my rod in the car for the three previous days with temps around -25 in Crested Butte. The rod held up fine and looks great. The guy I went fishing with kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to fish with bamboo. He really thought that I was going to break my rod.