Every once in a while, I wonder if all this new technology is really worth it.
An uncle of mine left me all his old fishing stuff including several really nice bamboo fly rods. He also left me one rod of absolutely no distinction. That is the one I want to talk about here.
It's a True Temper rod in fiberglass from the 1960s. I'm not sure how my uncle came by it. All his other rods are custom built bamboo and all his reels are House of Hardy (including a Cascapedia so eat heart out). And then there is this one cheapy model probably purchased from a hardware store. True Temper also made my wheelbarrow just so you get an idea of what kind of provenance we are talking about here. Maybe he was on a business trip and decided to fish on an afternoon he had off and bought something cheap because his gear was at home. Or maybe he kept it for taking other nephews fishing who that he didn't trust with his expensive bamboo. I don't know.
I do know that he kept it around from the 1960s until the day he died in the 1990s, so maybe he liked it. Maybe it was the rod he kept in the trunk as he drove around just in case he saw a little stream he wanted to try.
It's a seven-foot rod for five-weight line. That's what I reckon anyway as the people who made the rod didn't care enough to indicate the line weight on the rod. I tried a bunch of lines from three weight to six weight. You can cast four weight on it but it feels whippy and you can cast six weight on it but you have to concentrate more to prevent the line from slamming down. Five weight casts easy and smooth and comes down gossamer light.
The thing is, and this is really quite amazing, that it casts as well as my high-tech graphite rods. I got it out to forty feet easily and got it past fifty by adding a single haul. If I started using tricks like double hauling and a weight-forward line, who knows how far it could cast? But who cares as just about every fish I've ever hooked was somewhere between ten to forty feet out. (I determined the length of the casts by measuring the distances between the windows on a nearby public building and then casting parallel to the wall.)
It has a slow action like bamboo (although it is a little bit faster than most bamboo I've cast). Slow action and full flex takes a bit of getting used to. Mind you, graphite takes a bit of getting used to if you're never cast it too. Once you do get used to it, it's easy to cast and very forgiving. (It also has a soft tip. I've cast slow-action graphite rods but they tend to have stiff tips that ruin the feel. This isn't a stiff rod that the builders tapered to allow it to flex at the bottom, it's a rod that flexes progressively more along the entire length depending on how hard you choose to push it.)
It's a bit gaudy for my taste. The rod is white and the wrappings are garnet with some gold trim that serves no purpose at all. On the other hand, perhaps that is fitting as it is one of the odd coincidences in my life that every school from elementary to university I ever went to had garnet and gold as its official colours. True Temper called this model "The Executive" which is kind of funny but at least one bona fide white collar professional (my uncle was head of gastroenterology at the Mayo Clinic) bought one so maybe it isn't so funny after all.
It's only seven feet long and I'd have picked eight feet given my druthers. (I also suspect that True Temper didn't have exacting quality control so you couldn't be sure that every rod they made would be as good as this one. On the other hand, they were and are so cheap you could probably buy one knowing you could just toss it if you didn't like it.)
But it's a darn good rod and it belonged to a man I loved and who loved and cared about me.
It's getting overcast here and the barometer is falling. Time to go fishing.
An uncle of mine left me all his old fishing stuff including several really nice bamboo fly rods. He also left me one rod of absolutely no distinction. That is the one I want to talk about here.
It's a True Temper rod in fiberglass from the 1960s. I'm not sure how my uncle came by it. All his other rods are custom built bamboo and all his reels are House of Hardy (including a Cascapedia so eat heart out). And then there is this one cheapy model probably purchased from a hardware store. True Temper also made my wheelbarrow just so you get an idea of what kind of provenance we are talking about here. Maybe he was on a business trip and decided to fish on an afternoon he had off and bought something cheap because his gear was at home. Or maybe he kept it for taking other nephews fishing who that he didn't trust with his expensive bamboo. I don't know.
I do know that he kept it around from the 1960s until the day he died in the 1990s, so maybe he liked it. Maybe it was the rod he kept in the trunk as he drove around just in case he saw a little stream he wanted to try.
It's a seven-foot rod for five-weight line. That's what I reckon anyway as the people who made the rod didn't care enough to indicate the line weight on the rod. I tried a bunch of lines from three weight to six weight. You can cast four weight on it but it feels whippy and you can cast six weight on it but you have to concentrate more to prevent the line from slamming down. Five weight casts easy and smooth and comes down gossamer light.
The thing is, and this is really quite amazing, that it casts as well as my high-tech graphite rods. I got it out to forty feet easily and got it past fifty by adding a single haul. If I started using tricks like double hauling and a weight-forward line, who knows how far it could cast? But who cares as just about every fish I've ever hooked was somewhere between ten to forty feet out. (I determined the length of the casts by measuring the distances between the windows on a nearby public building and then casting parallel to the wall.)
It has a slow action like bamboo (although it is a little bit faster than most bamboo I've cast). Slow action and full flex takes a bit of getting used to. Mind you, graphite takes a bit of getting used to if you're never cast it too. Once you do get used to it, it's easy to cast and very forgiving. (It also has a soft tip. I've cast slow-action graphite rods but they tend to have stiff tips that ruin the feel. This isn't a stiff rod that the builders tapered to allow it to flex at the bottom, it's a rod that flexes progressively more along the entire length depending on how hard you choose to push it.)
It's a bit gaudy for my taste. The rod is white and the wrappings are garnet with some gold trim that serves no purpose at all. On the other hand, perhaps that is fitting as it is one of the odd coincidences in my life that every school from elementary to university I ever went to had garnet and gold as its official colours. True Temper called this model "The Executive" which is kind of funny but at least one bona fide white collar professional (my uncle was head of gastroenterology at the Mayo Clinic) bought one so maybe it isn't so funny after all.
It's only seven feet long and I'd have picked eight feet given my druthers. (I also suspect that True Temper didn't have exacting quality control so you couldn't be sure that every rod they made would be as good as this one. On the other hand, they were and are so cheap you could probably buy one knowing you could just toss it if you didn't like it.)
But it's a darn good rod and it belonged to a man I loved and who loved and cared about me.
It's getting overcast here and the barometer is falling. Time to go fishing.
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