What was your epiphany?

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gooseberryrods	What was your epiphany?		Lead	[-]
Posts: 643 08/29/2009 21:41	Tags : None I thought it would be interesting to hear what event made you decide to fish bamboo instead of plastic? Was it seeing the beauty of a T&T, Carlson, Payne or other for the first time? Perhaps it was playing a huge fish on fine tackle and realizing that the bamboo rod you were using could protect a 7X leader in a way that could not be matched with anything else you'd tried.This was the scenario for me many years ago as I managed to land two 4 lb. plus browns on a small Lake Superior tributary using a wispy little Garrison193. Every time the fish jumped or ran toward the tag alders, I was simply amazed at how much the rod bent and distributed the force over the length of the rod, right down into the handle.I knew that if I had been using any of my graphite rods, I would have broken off long before bringing either fish to the net. Yep, that was the day the skies opened up... Scott
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nativebrownie		#1	[url]	[-]
Posts: 887 08/29/2009 21:54	I remember well. I was talking to a good friend about my favorite waters, in my favorite area, and I said that those natives, in that beautiful area, deserved split cane. It is the natural quality, the craft, and the tradition that add to my winter evenings and my summer wanderings. Just my preference - old, original cane...
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bobbeegee		#2	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3001 08/29/2009 21:58	The first time I fished a Heddon bamboo rod. Bob Go Heels!!!
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dawgvet		#3	[url]	[-]
Posts: 26 08/29/2009 22:30	It was the first evening when my roommate in vet school let me cast his new 7' 4wt 'boo rod. That sweet feeling was just too much and I knew I had to have one. Been hooked ever since. Jedidiah
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oneculm		#4	[url]	[-]
Posts: 621 08/29/2009 23:19	I do not know what epiphany means? Not also sure what boo means.
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Marty		#5	[url]	[-]
Posts: 280 08/29/2009 23:32	I knew I kind of liked it in 1984 when I got my first frankenrod made from a mid and tip (great small stream rod).......My first really good boo rod was a refinished granger 9050 that had been redone with really bad purplish red nylon wraps and a dinged up reelseat (consequently it was pretty cheap) but it cast like a dream..... that was 95 and the snowball kept gaining mass and speed....... I had a discussion with friends today in the flyshop over coffee talking about how for me the feel of the cast even when not attached to a fish is so pleasant and such a delight that I just have no desire to fish graphite for anything any more. It is the feel of the working rod all the way to my hand that seals the deal for me...... Fly casting requires just enough concentration to focus my mind so that no mental noise or agita can penetrate... but not so much as to be stressful in anyway. It is impossible to worry about job, life, anything while worrying about fly selection and casting so as not to spook that brown right there in the feeding lane just under that branch.....ooo she rose again
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Canewrap	Re: epiphany	#6	[url]	[-]
Posts: 129 08/30/2009 00:05	I had been flyfishing about two years and still didn't feel like I could cast very well. Graphite just wasn't letting me feel the cast. I had been hearing about how great bamboo was, so I saw a South Bend 290 for sale in one of the dealer catalogs (pre-internet) that was priced right and I thought, why not. So, when I got that rod it was like a lightbulb went off. I could cast a whole lot better. However, it was downhill from there. I got a real beat-up light line Monty next and got it redone by Wes Cooper (wish I still had that rod). Then I traded both rods for a real light line Orvis (3/4 wt.) that I still have and love to fish. I have been corrupted by fiberglass since then, but still love to fish cane. For me its all about how the rod feels. I detest fast-action rods and that was probably why I just couldn't get into graphite (first one was a Sage that I finished out myself and I had to overline it just to get a feel that it was loading at all).
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Short Tip		#7	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1243 08/30/2009 09:36 Moderator	oneculm wrote: I do not know what epiphany means? Not also sure what boo means. "When all the rods and a lot of reels, lines, leader boxes, et cetera, had been sold, the gang paid at the cashier's window for what they'd bought and then made a bee line for the rug room to test their rods. I put mine together, tested it for a moment or so, and then started to show it to men I knew. Not a man was interested in my rod. They all, without a single exception, tried to get me to look at theirs. Extraordinary, how self centered most men are. Have you noticed it? "
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bobbeegee		#8	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3003 08/30/2009 10:19	oneculm wrote: I do not know what epiphany means? Not also sure what boo means. Yeah, what does boo mean? bobbyg Go Heels!!!
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gooseberryrods		#9	[url]	[-]
Posts: 644 08/30/2009 10:35	Oneculm- I am surprised you do not have something positive to contribute. Are you not a builder of bamboo rods? Have you not been moved by some of the attributes of the material you so expertly craft into your own fine cane rods?
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dragless	Boo can mean many things....	#10	[url]	[-]
Posts: 9 08/30/2009 10:49	"Boo" can mean many things to the mature angler: 1. As in having a look.. "I am going to finally have a close-up boo and see what little bug the fish are on ,because I can't get them to come up to this Adams.." 2. The first or second part of a major hurt.." Wow, I can't believe I just hooked my self in the neck with that weighted spuddler.Now I have a major boo-boo . 3. What we call the material our favourite rods are made from when we feel all cute and sentimental.."That Garrison 209E that he owns is such sweet boo.To bad the bastard wants $13000 for it and won't take it out of the display case. 4 My favourite is the thought that starts in your mind when you see a well endowed woman walk by and you catch yourself looking;however, your wife sees your eyes and just then your brain says.."Look at those boo......." You don't say anything next, just look elsewhere quickly. Need to go fish more...
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thegubster		#11	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1667 08/30/2009 11:39	Hi Scott, Your post has me in a tizzy now. Danged if I can actually remember the first bamboo rod I cast. Notice I didn't just say "boo" in deference to OneCulm-Dave (great sense o'humor..) Really, try as I might and I even asked my son, Nate. He just shrugged his shoulders. Geez man, that's embarassing b/c you now that it hasn't actually been that long for me. I'm thinking hard on it. Tell you what though, I do a goodly bit of backyard playing with my casts (needed to) and every time I have picked up a bamboo to play with. I honestly don't know why and have gone back to grab an SPL to compare. Nice.....but then went back to the bamboo's! I wish I could remember the first rod I cast around and better, the first time I fished one. Irritating. I never imagined this would happen b/c I loved my Sages a lot. Hope you get a lot of responses here, it's an interesting topic. Jeremy. Last Edited By: thegubster 08/30/2009 11:50. Edited 1 time.
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oneculm		#12	[url]	[-]
Posts: 625 08/30/2009 11:40	I have deleted my post as it was not very tasteful. I think what I do contribute is positive but just because it is not what you might want to hear does not make it wrong. I do love to build bamboo rods, but no I am not moved by the once it was a living object and many of the other emotional feelings others might have. I love it because I feel it is the best material I have found to build a fly fishing rod from. As to my own epiphany (no I did not know what it means) I have no one defining moment. Every time I try a rod from different makers past or present or a new rod I might make these are all times of epiphany for me. Did I use the word correctly?
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rodzilla	The Metamorphisis	#13	[url]	[-]
Posts: 137 08/30/2009 12:13	Like Gregor Samsa, I found myself transformed. It took a while to overcome the dominating illusion of moral superiority and have become comfortable with a smug curmudgeonly outlook on life. By avoiding character damaging practices such as the use of strike indicators and weighted nymphs, I can now fish for hours, never catch anything, and yet know my transformation is complete. Not that going through life as a cockroach is easy, mind you.
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BlackHillsBill		#14	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3042 08/30/2009 12:16	It isn't my thread, and I've yakked too much already. So just this, and I'm outta here. Dave, I believe the word was never used better.
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aquabonito		#15	[url]	[-]
Posts: 1032 08/30/2009 12:36 Angry Andy	My first rod was a bamboo, some product sold by Monkey Ward I believe. Given to me by my father in 1946. My first glass was a 7 1/2' Shakespeare Actionrod. My first graphite was an 8 1/2' Orvis (I don't remember the model). "You can't make new old friends" Andy
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Tom Smithwick	Epiphany	#16	[url]	[-]
Posts: 524 08/30/2009 13:47	I believe that what differentiates an epiphany form other experiences of conversion, or enlightenment is that it is a sudden event. Ebenezer Scrooges' experience on Christmas Eve, transforming him at once from miser to humanitarian is an example. From scripture, Saul the persecutor being blasted off his horse and rising to become St Paul the evangelist is another classic example. I actually did have such a moment the first time I fished my Summers midge. I found myself alone on a pool with a dozen or so trout feeding on a slow, but steady sulphur hatch, and began picking them off one by one at a leisurely pace. About half way through the experience, I realized that the rod had become an extension of my mind and arm. I could put the fly down just the way I wanted to, just where I wanted to, by willing it to go there. I think I can recall three instances where I fished a graphite rod for trout since then, and they all involved rough traveling. That was over 35 years ago.
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paxlev		#17	[url]	[-]
Posts: 842 08/30/2009 14:02	First it was the look and the history of bamboo. The first rods I purchased looked great, but as fishing instruments I wouldn't count them a lot better than the graphite I owned. Somewhere along the fourth or fifth bamboo rod I purchased the epiphany came on a small spring creek, fishing a Bradford Legacy 7'6" 2/2 I had purchased from Ron at Ron's rods. That rod almost (and I hate to use this phrase as it is oft used sometimes more out of exaggeration than anything else) cast itself. I would come to learn more about John's rods and the legacy he was following from the days of Jim Payne. From this rod on, it has been a learning experience. A refining of my tastes in bamboo rods. A number of rods (likely over 40 have come and gone) but the epiphany is still there when I get to fish one of those rods I still have or when a new rod comes along that I have been waiting for patiently. Thank you John Bradford for that first epiphany, and for your workmanship all these years. Thank you Bill Edwards, Walt Carpenter, Jeff Wagner, Jim Hidy, Dave Norling, Jeff Hatton, Dana Gray, Mike Spittler and the others whom I hold in high regard for such beautiful fly fishing tools. Ric Last Edited By: paxlev 08/30/2009 14:19. Edited 1 time.
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GrsdLnr		#18	[url]	[-]
Posts: 197 08/30/2009 18:16	A decade ago I had a part-time second job in a flyshop, giving the shop back most of the pittance they paid me thanks to a generous employee discount. One day a customer came in with a bamboo rod he wanted to sell on consignment. Turns out he'd made 13 rods in the late 70's and then just decided to quit. You'd never suspect this guy was a bamboo rodmaker - he's a biker who looks the part. The rod was a twin to one he'd given his friend Charlie Fox, a 7 1/2' 2/2. We put it up on the rod rack with a pretty reasonable price on it but hardly anyone even looked. Every few weeks the guy would come in for a new line or some tying stuff and we got to be pretty friendly. After about a year he asked me to take the rod off the rack and pack it up. After I did he handed me the tube and said, "It's yours." A week later the Hendricksons started popping and I caught several good trout with my new gift, and I understood what the big deal was with bamboo. Maybe not exactly an epiphany, but there would be no going back.
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cutthroattroutnm	Jack Howell/Lyle Dickerson	#19	[url]	[-]
Posts: 89 08/30/2009 22:15	My epiphany occurred when I first cast Jack Howell's version of Dickerson's 7613 (1952 taper in Jack's book, The Lovely Reed). I then fished no other rod more or less for a decade (along with a Peerless 1-1/2 that I finally had to get Bob Corsetti to refurbish for me; and Jack had to refinish his rod for me - 50 fish days on the San Juan can do that). Then this year I got a real Dickerson 7613 (a 1951 model - all original), and the heavens really opened up. The Master's brilliance was self-evident. It just doesn't get any better for a dry fly fisherman.
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Kai		#20	[url]	[-]
Posts: 203 08/31/2009 15:28	When I first started fly fishing, I read fly fishing catalogs and advertising copy touting the latest high-modulus graphite and the world's fastest action rods. My fly rods were a progression of the fastest, stiffest, lightest, and most expensive graphite (and later, boron) rods known to mankind. These fast graphite rods were all I fished for many years. Then, I bought a cheap graphite rod for one of my children. It was a slower, heavier, lower modulus graphite rod with a much softer action. While working with my son, casting this rod, I found that I enjoyed fishing with it more than I did my more expensive super-fast rod. This revelation that faster and lighter might not always be better was what prompted me to try out bamboo. I purchased my first bamboo rod from Len Codella, a well known purveyer of used and new bamboo rods. It was a 4 weight rod made by the late George Maurer. Practice casting my new rod on my back lawn was a revelation. It was slower, but had more casting feel to it. I had more of a connection to what the fly line was doing, particularly on the back cast. My first fishing trip with this rod was a paradigm shift for me. I really felt the rod working for me as I fished. The deep flex and gentle application of power improved my casting and enjoyment immediately. After fishing with my new bamboo rod, I was hooked. I was a bamboo rod convert (my wife would say cultist) from that day onward.
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What was your epiphany?

What was your epiphany?