I went fishing with three rods the other day.
My mother passed away in February (it was time), and the service led to hanging out with distant family members I hadn’t seen in a while. Unfortunately, these are the only times we get together. It was very interesting to see gravestones from so many relatives all in a ~200 square foot piece of land. This included many relatives I knew well and my grandfather's business partner and wife. Myself, I will be cooked to dust and spread on a riverbank.
My cousin’s husband came up to me after the service and we started talking about fishing. He said that he had my grandfather’s old flyrod and asked if I wanted to check it out. I said I’d love to sometime. He immediately got in his car and went home to get it for me.
My mother’s father was quite a fellow. Throughout my entire extended family, fishing for salmon has been a passion and/or a profession for several generations. He certainly had that in his blood. His love for all things fishing was well represented in his garage. I spent many an hour just looking through his rod collection and tackle every time we visited. All sides of my family are rooted in Olympia- if you are oldish like me, you might remember Gillette and Guffey drugstores which were dotted across Olympia up through the 1970’s. That was Grandpa’s set of stores. Cue Nancy Griffith, "Love at the Five and Dime".
The rod is a 7’6” Phillipson Challenger with a Bronson Royalist reel. It carried the original line. I cleaned it all up and treated the line and went fishing this week. I revered both of my grandfathers, and it was great to connect with one of them again. It was a terrestrial day and the rod performed well. The Phillipson probably won’t get out of the tube much, but I am glad I got it back to the river one more time.
I do think Grandpa would have been happy that I got his rod back out on the water.
My favorite trout rod for the last ~20 years has been a two-piece 8.5 ft Orvis 4wt TLS PowerMatrix. Me and the TLS have a productive history together and I feared for the day that I would finally break it. Well, of course it happened, in the stupidest of ways. I had been searching for a sister rod online for a couple years and now I stepped up that effort. Lo and behold, there it was, online at "Elite Pawn + Jewelry", Port St. Lucie, Florida, 34945. I didn’t haggle, just ponied up the dough and it got shipped to me. It is in better shape than my old one and my love for that rod quickly transferred to the new version. Sorry, dear old TLS, that's just the way it is.
It was great to get back out with the TLS. I guess I better get online and look for a replacement, cuz you never know what can happen.
I caught a truly memorable fish at this spot. It started with an awesome surface take on an October Caddis dry.
I also fished the new TLS on this river yesterday and caught a small bull, a whitefish, and a rainbow.
I was able to send my broken TLS back to Orvis and, because it wasn’t quite 25 years old, it was still under warranty. For a very reasonable price they replaced that rod with an Orvis Access, which just got delivered. Sometime soon I will give it a try. Next summer might be all about a pack rod, and this would suit that very well.
One last rod story, same day as with the Phillipson. My workhorse steelhead rod is a TFO 11 ft 7-weight switch rod. I have had it for a decade I think, but it's like the guy who says “I’ve had that ax for 40 years, but I've replaced the handle 4 times and the head 3 times”. No part of my switch rod is original equipment. I broke another section this weekend, about 10 casts into my morning. Not to be deterred, I worked hard on the “two-separate-hand” casting process and actually got a hit.
I badly wanted to get a steelhead on the two-part rod, just to see if I could get it in. But I always really want to get one, so that was probably was not much different than usual.
My mother passed away in February (it was time), and the service led to hanging out with distant family members I hadn’t seen in a while. Unfortunately, these are the only times we get together. It was very interesting to see gravestones from so many relatives all in a ~200 square foot piece of land. This included many relatives I knew well and my grandfather's business partner and wife. Myself, I will be cooked to dust and spread on a riverbank.
My cousin’s husband came up to me after the service and we started talking about fishing. He said that he had my grandfather’s old flyrod and asked if I wanted to check it out. I said I’d love to sometime. He immediately got in his car and went home to get it for me.
My mother’s father was quite a fellow. Throughout my entire extended family, fishing for salmon has been a passion and/or a profession for several generations. He certainly had that in his blood. His love for all things fishing was well represented in his garage. I spent many an hour just looking through his rod collection and tackle every time we visited. All sides of my family are rooted in Olympia- if you are oldish like me, you might remember Gillette and Guffey drugstores which were dotted across Olympia up through the 1970’s. That was Grandpa’s set of stores. Cue Nancy Griffith, "Love at the Five and Dime".
The rod is a 7’6” Phillipson Challenger with a Bronson Royalist reel. It carried the original line. I cleaned it all up and treated the line and went fishing this week. I revered both of my grandfathers, and it was great to connect with one of them again. It was a terrestrial day and the rod performed well. The Phillipson probably won’t get out of the tube much, but I am glad I got it back to the river one more time.
I do think Grandpa would have been happy that I got his rod back out on the water.
My favorite trout rod for the last ~20 years has been a two-piece 8.5 ft Orvis 4wt TLS PowerMatrix. Me and the TLS have a productive history together and I feared for the day that I would finally break it. Well, of course it happened, in the stupidest of ways. I had been searching for a sister rod online for a couple years and now I stepped up that effort. Lo and behold, there it was, online at "Elite Pawn + Jewelry", Port St. Lucie, Florida, 34945. I didn’t haggle, just ponied up the dough and it got shipped to me. It is in better shape than my old one and my love for that rod quickly transferred to the new version. Sorry, dear old TLS, that's just the way it is.
It was great to get back out with the TLS. I guess I better get online and look for a replacement, cuz you never know what can happen.
I caught a truly memorable fish at this spot. It started with an awesome surface take on an October Caddis dry.
I also fished the new TLS on this river yesterday and caught a small bull, a whitefish, and a rainbow.
I was able to send my broken TLS back to Orvis and, because it wasn’t quite 25 years old, it was still under warranty. For a very reasonable price they replaced that rod with an Orvis Access, which just got delivered. Sometime soon I will give it a try. Next summer might be all about a pack rod, and this would suit that very well.
One last rod story, same day as with the Phillipson. My workhorse steelhead rod is a TFO 11 ft 7-weight switch rod. I have had it for a decade I think, but it's like the guy who says “I’ve had that ax for 40 years, but I've replaced the handle 4 times and the head 3 times”. No part of my switch rod is original equipment. I broke another section this weekend, about 10 casts into my morning. Not to be deterred, I worked hard on the “two-separate-hand” casting process and actually got a hit.
I badly wanted to get a steelhead on the two-part rod, just to see if I could get it in. But I always really want to get one, so that was probably was not much different than usual.
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