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A few weeks ago I was able to sneak over to the Catskills for a couple of days, which served as my first real trout trip of the season. We’ve had such a late spring this year that it was a bit shocking not to have wet a line until May.
If you’re lucky, you get to fish with some great people over the years, and Junior and I recently had the pleasure of fishing with Ben Carmichael last summer up on the Margaree in Cape Breton.
It doesn’t always happen like this but in the last hour of the last day of my recent Salmon trip to Nova Scotia I was working a small pool on the Baddeck River and managed to hook up to a fish.
All fishing guides have their “secret sauce” of one sort or another, the thing they turn to when the fishing is tough or they need a little extra luck. Usually it’s a secret fly, or a little known pool they they’ve kept under wraps for a special occasion.
Anyone who regularly fishes one-handed salmon rods and who hooks into a big fish knows how nice it is to be able to attach a fighting butt to the bottom of their rod. On a recent trip to the Gaspe I was lucky enough to hook into a couple of pretty sizable ones myself...
Earlier this spring on a trip down to Pennsylvania I managed to get a look at some notes from Tom Maxwell’s personal papers, courtesy of the Maxwell family. One collection was particularly interesting, as it appeared to be Tom’s attempt to distill his thoughts on rod design.
One of the Payne rods we have coming in on consignment has an absolutely exquisite rod tube, one that’s made of bamboo with an understated and elegant brass top. I took a little time away from rodwork the other day to look at it more carefully and decided to see if I could build something similar.
Our latest video, this one on how I clean the ferrules on my fly rods in order to make sure that the fit is smooth and tight. Also, we shot it in high-definition which you can select by clicking on the gear icon in the video frame. Hope you enjoy! -Marc
Here’s our newest video on making precision ferrules…
I’ve always built the fighting butts on my salmon rods with standard cork, but recently I carved out a few minutes to play with some new designs that I had been mulling over inspired in part by the payne-style acorn caps that I was working on some while back. Anyway, here’s the result. Thoughts? Marc
We did our first video on making payne style reel seats almost a year ago, and I’m happy to say that our second one is finally ready for prime time! In this one Junior has filmed how I make the brass rod tube hardware for my Spinoza model fly rods. I hope you enjoy it […]
Note: our thanks to Cape Bretton guide Elmer Hart for showing us his Pinky Gillum fly boxes and photos and for sharing his history and stories. So on my recent fishing trip to Canada a local friend stopped by my fishing cabin to show me something. His father had guided famed bamboo rodmaker Harold “Pinky” Gillum...