I donated a rod to the local Trout Unlimited chapter this year.  TU does good work, and I was happy to be able to contribute for their benefit.   Actually, I took 3 rods to the event, and the winning bidder got his choice of the 3 rods.  The rod that went home with the winner was a “Mitey midge”, a 6ft3 4-weight, based on Paul young’s famous Midge taper, but with a slightly steeper slope, so as to speed up the rod just a little bit.


 I cast a couple Midges based on the original taper, and although they are great rods, I wanted a short rod for tight streams, that still had the muscle to project a dry-dropper rig upstream, and I thought a slightly faster rod would do that better.  It worked out really well, doing exactly what I wanted.  Fans of the original Midge don’t care for the slightly quicker pace of my rod, but it is a very useful rod for its intended purpose.  This particular rod was kind of special to me because it was the first rod to sport ferrules I made myself.  At one of the Southern Rodmaker gatherings a few years ago, Alan Kube sat me down in front of a Sherline and showed me how to make ferrules out of nickel-silver tubing.  That ferrule set went onto the Mitey Midge.  (The next couple I made, without Alan looking over my shoulder, weren’t quite as perfect, which is the way it usually works.)  I hope the rod gets years of good use.