From The Workbench

December is a good time for a fisherman to take stock. Among other things there are fly boxes to be refilled, lines to be cleaned, and rods to be hung up in a dry, out-of-the-way place. There’s a certain comfort in these kinds of simple seasonal tasks which I’ve really grown to appreciate over the…

Well I’ve always had a number of customers from Japan who have been interested in bamboo, but I was recently lucky enough to have Dr. Todd Larson, the publisher of Whitefish Press, owner of the Classic Fly Rod Forum, and authority on all things relating to fishing history, pen an article about me for the…

I wrote a few weeks ago about a guy named Tom Bailey, an old-time catskill rodmaker who used to work at Leonard when I was there. In addition to Bailey recounting the “window shopping” that had gone on at the shop from time to time I had also alluded to a second story about him and […]

Talk about good timing. Junior had been talking earlier this fall about light salmon reels and Hardy’s “Taupo” — a relatively scarce reel that had been in production in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s — was one of the models that had come up in our conversation. Well as it turns out Hardy has decided to…

I had a lot of time to think about bamboo salmon rods on my recent trip to Canada. I don’t make a ton of them these days and not because I don’t enjoy it — I do — but more for the simple reason that the demand for salmon rods is nowhere near what it is…

Well I’m home again after a busy weekend in Danbury, CT at the Art of the Angler show. I had a great time, saw a number of old friends, got to see a few customers, and managed to keep from walking out of the show with more than I brought in, which for me is…

Well, a number of folks have emailed to ask how my trip is going and when I’m coming back. As you can probably tell from the relative silence here, I’ve been away for a few weeks for some salmon fishing and while I’m not home yet I will be heading home fairly soon. Junior has…

As I said in my previous post Tom Bailey didn’t talk a whole lot in the Leonard Shop but when he did it was usually pretty good. One story that will always stick in my mind– and which I remembered in writing the last post–is one he told me about his early days as a…

One of the big reasons why I started doing this blog is not only to talk about bamboo rods and fly fishing but also to try and preserve, for posterity, a little bit of the history of this craft. I was very fortunate to get my start in rodbuilding during the end of the major…

I‘ve been combing through my assortment of salmon flies over the past week or so, an annual exercise which always turns out to be a lot of fun. I guess I’ve always had a thing for salmon flies. They have a certain classic character to them and there are few things as bold or as beautiful…

Many apologies for the radio silence in the last week. I have a few posts in the works but the workbench has taken priority over the keyboard of late. The reason is that I’ve got a number of orders I’m trying to get done before I head off to Canada for a few weeks of…