PHY Martha Marie, #4020

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quashnet
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PHY Martha Marie, #4020

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Post by quashnet »

This is Paul H. Young Co. "Martha Marie", 7'6" 2/2, serial #4020, built
by Robert W. Summers for George Beall in 1962. Lettered in Bob
Summers's handwriting, First flat: George Beall Feb. 21, 1962 Second flat: Martha Marie Model 7 1/2' 3.40 oz. Third flat: Paul H. Young Co.
Built for George
Beall, believed to have been a US ambassador and a member of Charles
Ritz's International Fario Club, and known to have been an expatriate
American who lived
in southern France, fished in the Pyrenees and northern Spain, and
authored magazine articles about the early fly fishing history of
Spain.
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According
to an obituary written by Jean-Paul Pequegnot, Beall was an American
military officer who took part in the Normandy campaign, and was at
Biarritz American University in southern France at the end of World War
II (possibly as a professor of business management). He married an
artist, Jacqueline Blanchet, who became known as Killy Beall, and
stayed at Biarritz. Pequegnot says that for more than fifty years,
Beall fished the Nives and Gaves Rivers in the Pyrenees, which he
considered the most beautiful in the world. Beall emphasized
catch-and-release angling in a time and place when this was not
popular. He was a friend of Paul H. Young, who visited Spain in 1948
along with Luis Marden. I wish I knew whether Beall helped Young and
Marden gain special access to the rivers of France and Spain.

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George
Beall owned an extraordinary collection of bamboo rods by Winston,
Payne, Gillum, and Garrison. He owned several Dickersons. But Pequegnot
said that his favorites were a series of rods by the Paul H. Young Co.,
including an early serial numbered rod, PHY Para 16 #1961. When I
acquired PHY Martha Marie #4020 over twenty years ago, in 1990, it had a
Dickerson hookkeeper and came in a Dickerson tube. So the rod is
believed to have been refinished at least three times: once by Lyle
Dickerson, and twice
(in 1990 and 2009) by Bob Summers, who added a replacement cork grip
during the most recent refinish, as shown below (the cork reel seat is
still original).

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In
twenty years I have fished this rod in many places and enjoyed many
adventures with it in my hand. But as the Martha Marie travels in my
beat-up pickup truck to a nearby river in Massachusetts, I often wonder
whether it traveled in a diplomatic pouch between France, Spain,
England, Montana, New Zealand, and the other worldwide destinations
that Beall fished. I wonder whether Charles Ritz gave it a trial
workout on his casting pool, while George Beall watched and smiled. I
wonder whether this Martha Marie caught more trout on the Itchen, in
the chalkstreams of Normandy, the rivers of the Pyrenees, and northern
Spain's Aragon River than it will ever catch while I fish it in the
USA. It is the first Paul H. Young Co. rod that I ever owned. I expect
it will be the last one in my collection that I pass along to a new
owner.
Please visit and bookmark the Paul H. Young Rod Database
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Other rod databases: Dickerson , Orvis , Powell

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