The rod I'm working on now is both unusual and interesting.  It's a 7ft6 Paul Young Perfectionist, usually for a 4wt, sometimes a 5.  This taper has been lauded in many corners, but I have to say that in general, it's one that has not tripped my trigger. Several of the clones I've cast have seemed too soft.  The best by far was a twisted Perfectionist that was crisp and clean-casting, MUCH better than the equivalent rod that wasn't twisted.  By "twisted" I mean that when the rod was glued up, it was twisted exactly one-sixth of a rotation between each guide, so that it looks like a lazy corkscrew as you sight down it.  This is a decades-old technique to give a rod more "energy", and having cast 2 rods made at the same time, one straight and one twisted, I have to say that the technique works.  Besides the troubles of glueing up the twisted rod correctly, there is also the problem of having the twist slowly "unwind" itself over time, as the formerly-straight splines try to get that way once again.  Then your guides no longer line up.  But that rod had magic built into it!

Anyway, this rod is unusual for at least 2 reasons.  First, it is an unusual Perfectionist, a taper taken off of a Perfectionist that Paul Young made for his wife, Martha Marie.  She had a heavier, 7ft6 rod named after her (the PY Martha Marie 5/6wt), but this particular Perfectionist she fished herself.  This taper matches no published taper of a PY Perfectionist; it is marked by a very unusual section of the taper, at least 15 inches long, where the taper essentially doesn't change at all.  Since the basic theory of a taper is to amplify energy from the hand down through increasingly-thin bamboo to a quickly-moving tiptop, the idea of having a relatively large section of the rod with no taper is anathema.  I have never cast this taper, and as you may know, I have sworn never to invest 40-50 hours into a taper that I have never cast, but I broke the rule for this rod.  2 well-known national rod-makers, having cast the original, have made copies of it, and its praises have been sung by those who have cast it.  So we'll see.

The unfinished MM Perfectionist above.

Second, this rod is not for me: it is part of a 3-way rod-swap between me and 2 other rod-making friends of mine, one in Arkansas, the other in Tennessee.  David is going to get this rod, and I will get some rod (I don't know what) from Rick.  This Perfectionist will not be twisted.  it's flamed a la Paul Young, and it has a custom hand-made 14/13 step-down ferrule (Paul Young regularly used Super-Z ferrules which are not step-down).  Wraps will probably be a bit more bright than Paul Young originals, which leaned towards the understated.  So there you have it.  I hope to have it done for the Colorado Rodmaker Reunion, so that I can get some feedback on the taper before I hand the rod off in October at the Southern Rodmakers Gathering.

Lee

Winter is finally over here in the midwest, and it's about $&^$( time.  This hasn't been the worst winter we've ever seen here, but it was consistent and long - the first time in several years where, between Nov 15 and April 15, there wasn't one single reasonable day. Usually, we have a warming spell that will get into the 50s or 60s for a couple of days, and the urge to get outside overwhelms.  Not this year, and it felt looooong.

Last week, the tail end of April, Neil and I managed 2 days away, and we visited our favorite trout stream, Verdigre.  We had the good fortune to get away in mid-week, and we were the only guys fishing the entire creek.  Plenty of turkey hunters around, but no one on the stream.  First day, temps were in the 60s, but the wind was howling out of the south.  I was glad I had brought a 5wt, the 8013WT.  That's a new un-fished rod, 8ft, based in the Dickerson 8013, but made with weird geometry - a big triangle rather than the standard hex.  The rod is light and strong, and I was glad to have it's power to push flies into the wind.  Neil was using his Driggs and as usual, it was omnivalent.  We both caught fish in the morning, me out of the weir pool, using a long downstream drift and one of Neil's beautiful little wire midges hung under a dry...  Neil took a beautiful rainbow out of the top of the Phd pool.  45 minutes in the smoker, and those trout were lunch.  BWOs were hatching, but the fish would only hit small nymphs on the rise - no surface action at all.

A couple of 16-inch stream-born browns came out of the secret pool in the afternoon, and you always feel pretty special to catch a couple of big native trout in such a tiny stream (also, to put them back to keep the cycle going...)

A storm came through that night, and the next day proved to be consistently drizzly and gray.  You'd think that would make the fish happy, but they were jumpy and wary.  A small gray scud attracted attention in the Phd pool, but as is sometimes the case, it only worked for me, not Neil - the fish were out to snub him that day. Other days Neil rakes them in and I am the skunkee.   Neil stayed with his Driggs, while I tried out my second new rod, a Payne 98 clone, with bamboo ferrules.  I feared it might not have the muscle to project line-and-fly into tight spaces, but it was great, one of the lightest casting rods around.  The surprise fly of the day was a small sparkley streamer given to me by a friend - he ties them for use in Arkansas, and I had tried them there and here with absolutely no luck, but this day, it was a hot fly - just dangling the fly in the water downstream, getting ready to cast, rainbows would dash out from under a bank, look you in the eye, then ignore you and grab that glittery thing.  That sort of behavior carried through on different sections of the stream, fished upstream and down.  I've got to find some of that sparkle stuff!

It's always a good time on Verdigre, but when you can catch a few extra-nice fish, out of a couple of the most difficult pools on the stream, that's special, and a nice way to start the year.  Long live Spring!

Lee

The hot humid August weather finally broke a bit and on the spur of the moment, Neil and I headed up to Verdigre creek to try our hands at hopper fishing over the weekend. You think about hopper fishing and you think about splatting big flies on the water, and explosive attacks by the fish. It can be a thrill. We were ready with twin cane rods (both Driggs Rivers), multiple fly patterns, and a neat little smoker, just in case we caught lunch on time.

Being a small spring creek running through grassy meadows, Verdigre would seem to be a great candidate for hopper fishing if the hoppers are out. And they were, dozens flying at every step though the trail grass. Sneaking up on the stream, a person could see pods of fish in certain places, and in some of those places, it was even possible to thread a cast between stands of grass onto the water. Artificial hoppers, though, as it turned out, were not on the menu. You get an idea of how hopper fishing is going to be when you creep through the grass and flush live hoppers into the creek. Then the big juicy bugs slowly frog-kick their way across the stream, right over top of the trout, sending out little wakes at each kick that say "Here I am! Eat me!" And the fish stay glued to the bottom.

When the fish won’t eat the real thing, what chance does your imitation have?

Neil managed to catch lunch on a woven-body drowned-hopper pattern but my high-floaters drew nothing but disdain.

What DID work were dark woolly buggers stripped upstream under cut-away banks and big clumps of grass hanging over the stream. I caught my share that way, and Neil twice had 3X tippet broken off on the initial strike, by something bigger than the calibrated 11-inch stockers.

My favorite fish of the weekend turned out to be hiding under a weedbed, onto which I unintentionally cast my hopper-dropper rig. The hopper hung up on the weeds, but the dropper must have been dangling underneath. When I tugged to free the rig, the fish obligingly came out and slammed the dropper nymph, thus freeing my dry from the weeds. Thank you very much!

Lee

Here in Nebraska, trout fishing most often comes with an asterisk attached: special casting conditions may apply, subject to approval of the irrigation/weather gods, no long casts required, not responsible for streamside vegetation/in-stream algae; warranty void if temperatures are too high or dissolved oxygen is too low, notice: hatchery trout have been calibrated at 11 inches to fit into US-regulation medium skillet… In truth, fishing here can be very rewarding, as many of our trout streams require a fly fisher to be relatively good – in terms of casting, reading the water, and fly selection. It’s not always easy, and so when you succeed, it can be very satisfying.

But still when the prospect of a trip to Colorado looms, visions of trout as long as your arm start to swim into and through your dreams. The Frying Pan, the Roaring Fork, the Crystal, the Colorado… big waters, big fish… It’s intoxicating.

So what do you do, what do you think, after that trip, and the fishing has been OK, sometimes pretty good, and sometimes just plain slow, and never cosmic?

Most of time, it wasn’t that there were no fish to catch. Most of the time, fish ended up in the net. And they were nice fish, 13, 14, 15 inches long, browns, brookies, rainbows. But they often weren’t easy. They’d take the same fly on the 9^th drift over their spot.

They’d short-strike, then lie low for 15 minutes, then eventually come back after a fly again. In some cases, bankside fish would ignore the PMDs, drakes, caddises, and only pick off an ant or beetle.

In slow pools they’d float along with the current, eyeing your fly for 3 or 4 feet, before deciding either to eat it, or, more frequently, silently to drop back down into the shadows.

Like I say, it’s generally not that there weren’t any fish to be caught

– but it was slow enough that a fisherman could sort of lose interest, start to wonder what else you might productively do with your time, then be very surprised when a fish took. That’s a good way to miss a strike, by the way.

Coming back from Mecca, you want to say that you got religion; coming back from France, you want to say that you ate and drank well at every meal; coming back from Colorado, you want to say that you caught lots of fish, or really big fish, or both. When it doesn’t happen, you’re kind of at a loss. Disappointed.

But then, that doesn’t seem right, does it? After all, fishing wasn’t bad. In fact, some of it was pretty darned good. So why the long face? Because of expectations, I suppose. Those pesky things get in the way of reality on a regular basis. The next time I clean out my vest, I think I’m going to toss out that pocket-full of expectations I carry around in there.

The true purpose of the trip, by the way, was to attend a bamboo rod-makers meet, and that was good fun. Cast some great rods – from Gnomish Rod Works, Harry Boyd, Bob Taylor, John Channer, Marcello Calviello. Marcello’s 7ft 4wt got my vote for the nicest-casting rod on the rack – bamboo ferrules, light, smooth, responsive, effortless tight loops into the wind - just a sweet-casting rod. This rod, plus a 3-piece version by Harry, inspired me to try making a bamboo-ferruled rod – more on that as work progresses. Testing out new tapers and designs is one of the great reasons to attend a rod-makers event. A low-volume maker like me would spend decades doing all the experimentation that you can experience at one meet.   "Good-but-not-great fishing aside", that was worth the price of admission.

Lee