The twin tri-hex 8013s have been ferruled, and they have all the hardware save reelseats attached.  nearly ready for final finish.  One is wrapped chinese red double-tipped lemon yellow then black.  The other is wrapped olive green tipped royal blue.  Here's a photo, including a cut-off peg which shows the tri-hex geometry.  Under the reelseat I leave the rod solid, but the majority of the butt is completely hollow - that center triangle is removed.


Overall though, rod progress has recently been delayed, and here are the delays:

Game and Parks started  turkey season early this year, I suppose in an attempt to suppress the burgeoning turkey population in the state.  I'd never shot a turkey before, but since I believe they push pheasants out of local habitat, I was happy to try to participate in what I consider the "turkey eradication program."  I lucked out, and now we have thanksgiving dinner in the freezer.  The smaller bird got filleted and smoked over applewood.  Mm good!

"Now we return you to your regularly scheduled rod-making projects."

- Do the right thing.

I've been working on a couple of rods, an 8013 tri-hex and an 8615 tri-hex.  The 8013 is first in line, and since I've made the rod before, and it has been well-received, I decided to make 2 of the same at the same time.  It saves some time, since you only set the forms once for 2 rods, so to speak.  Of course, the tri-hex rods, with strips of different sizes require setting the forms twice as often as a regular hex rod (not to mention precise planing of the inside apexes too), so maybe it all works out more or less the same...  Anyway.

This morning was glue-up for the 2 butts and 3 tips.  The first butt went together just fine - mist the strips with water, carefully spread the URAC 185 on the taped-up splines, roll them up, then roll them apart again, removing glue that squeezed into the inside cavity (something you have to do when you are making hollow-builts), making sure that you don't starve the glue joints, then roll back up, and run through the binder 4 times.  Heat-shrink tubing on each end, hit it with the heat-gun, then pierce the tubing, paper clips through it, then hang the rod section from a hook with a pipe wrench hanging on the other end.  Easy.

The second butt went the same way.  Then, done with binding I looked it over - Hey, what's that gap?  How did THAT sneak through?  This is "WHEN THINGS GO WRONG".  A rod with a nice, visible glue gap like that would probably fish just fine for decades, with nary a problem, but it looks like Hell, and what rodmaker WANTS  to show off a rod that "looks like Hell?"  No one, at least on purpose.   If I had not noticed the gap, and hung the rod to dry, then I would have had no decision to make -  the rod has a gap, that stinks, but it's still a good, fishable rod. 

But since I saw it right away, I had a choice - let it go, or strip off the string, wash the strips, throw them into the oven to dry, and later replace the offending strips.  Well, I've inadvertently made enough rods with gaps, so having a choice this time, the decision was kind of already made.  (Not without a pause and a sigh, though.)  Those 4 layers of string, when still wet and sticky, are a mess to pry apart and get off.  The glue washed off pretty easily with running water and a rough rag.  Then, straight onto one of Harry Boyd's fixtures and into the oven to dry out.  The rod will eventually turn out fine, but not today!

We all have "things that go wrong" from time to time, in all facets of life.  Sometimes all you can do is react to the consequences; sometimes you have a choice and I guess I'll argue that most of the time it'll end up feeling better to do the right thing, whatever that is, even if it isn't easiest.  (But I'll modify this post as necessary after I eventually get the second butt "fixed").

CRR was held again this year at Chair Mountain Ranch in Marble CO on the Crystal River.


 We planned it a week later than previous years (july 16-1 , hoping to schedule after run-off subsided.  That almost worked out.  You can visit Coloradorodmakers.org for the program.   Here are the rod racks early in the day, before they are fully loaded.  Where else can you go and have the opportunity to cast 100 rods, AND quiz the makers on the tapers and techniques used?


 Highlights for me were the thursday tasting of CO wines, accompanied by FR chicken, venison and buffalo appetizers, and most especially, the selection of original Dickerson rods Gerry Stein brought for us to look at and to handle.

Probably $100,000 of rods laying on that table, everything from BIG salmon rods (at left) to 6-1/2 ft 4 weights.  - virtually every classic Dickerson taper was represented, 9016, 8615, 8014, 8013, 8012, 7613, 7612, 7012, 7011...  solid and hollow-built...  really a unique grouping of rods from one of the best makers ever (JMHO)

Below, my friend Alan Kube demonstrates how he draws Nickel-Silver tubing of different sizes, for use in making your own ferrules.



After the meet, I had the opportunity to fish a couple days, and run-off was indeed down, and the fishing was pretty darned good.  Fished the Frying Pan several times.  This is the bottom of the flats under the dam, right where the river takes that first left turn, towards evening.  You can nymph there all day, but we fished uniquely that last 1-1/2 hours of light, with size 20 dries.

You enter the river from the left, through the willows, and if you aren't careful, you can almost step on big fish in the shallow water - you surely will spook them.  With lots of bugs coming off, it wasn't always easy to hook fish, and when you did, it wasn't easy to land them.  I had more than one hook straightened by big fish.  Towards dark, you just hear them and set on the sound - if it's big, you will likely never see it, maybe just feel the power as it shakes its head and unkinks your hook for you.

Later we drove over the mountain to Paonia, Jeff Hatton's home water, and fished the Gunnison.  My first time on that river, and it's an odd landscape - big cold river running through rocky desert.

That light green in the water is moss on the rocks, and the fish tend to hang in holes in the moss.

We fished hopper-dropper combos, and the first day, the fish would come up and look, but usually turn away.  Saw some darned big fish though!  The next day, they were more willing.  here's Rick with a nice brown:

A rainbow for me:

That's my 8013 tri-hex beside the net - a good rod for those waters.

On the way back east, I stopped and fished one evening on the Yampa near Steamboat Springs.  I don't think I've ever seem more acrobatic fish - the jumping-est fish I've seen.  And very pretty colors to boot. 

Overall, one of the best CRRs, and some of the best fishing I've had out there.  oh, yeah, forgot to mention the PMDs and Green Drakes that were emerging  on the Fork and Pan- can't beat fishinjg big dries to hungry fish!

Lee

I recently finished a couple of new rods.  One is a repeat of a rod I made last year - the experimental D8013h Tri-Hex which, instead of being a standard hexagon, is more like a triangle with the corners cut off.  It still has 6 strips in it, but 3 are small and 3 are larger.  it's a more complicated rod to put together, but the geometry seems to offer some distinct advantages - more power, less weight, smoothness, and very "uni-directional".  The reelseat on this rod is spalted ash, which goes very well, i think, with the straw-colored cane.



The second is a Dickerson 8615  8ft6 6wt.  My recent trip to the Gray Reef persuaded me of the value of a rod in that length.  Got a very nice Dickerson replica up-locking reelseat from my friend Alan, full wells grip.  You don't have to make too many rods to learn that some rods come together easy and some try to fight you.  It doesn't have anything to do with how good the rod turns out in the end, either, it's just some cosmic quirk in the process.  Anyway, this rod just seemed to jump together almost on it's own.  Now it needs to be fished.

Start on the next rod will likely wait until after the Colorado Rodmakers Reunion in mid-July, to see if any taper jumps out at me among the hundreds that will be there.

Lee

As I’ve noted many times here, the first time fishing on new waters can be an exercise in frustration – you don’t know the flies, or the techniques, or how the fish are going to behave. And it’s plenty easy enough to get skunked. Which stinks well enough when you’re near home, but stinks even more after you’ve driven 700 miles to get to “the best water in the lower 48”.  In general I’ve concluded that it’s best to enter new waters with reasonable (read: lowered) expectations.

So, what do you do when you fish a new place, different water, different techniques, and… you have a great time, and catch more big fish than you’ve ever caught in one outing? Well, the first thing you do is to say “Thank you Alan!” Alan who has been a rod-making mentor and friend for years, and who took the time to re-rig my leaders, hand me a box of flies, show me the spots, show how to mend for the tricky drifts, and finally, take pictures of me holding big fish. This is the first one I caught. It’s fuzzy because the camera just came out of the water…


Gray Reef is a tailwater on the North Platte, and in that respect it’s maybe a typical tailwater: millions of small bugs, virtually no rises, fast water, long leaders, heavy weight and small flies, and big, fat fish. You spend all your time watching an indicator, and the takes can be subtle, or vicious, more often subtle. Aside from egg patterns, the biggest fly we used was a size 20, and black was the name of the game for us. Another character on the river, “Automatic Bob”, was slaying them with a tiny sparkly green midge concoction, about size 22. Once you have the flies, weight and depth down, then it all seems to come down to drift. The first day, I couldn’t get it, and I was cussing Glenn who was pulling them out of the same run I was uselessly casting into again and again. Here’s Glenn with one on the line.


I don’t nymph that often, and basically not by preference, but one thing I do know about it is that sometimes, and it will happen eventually if you stick with it, you get into a groove where you’re just tuned in: you’ve got  your mends down, you set the hook when the indicator ticks, or it sinks where it hasn’t before, or you often do it without knowing why, and virtually each time a fish is one the other end. Alan was in that groove, and I don’t know how many fish he netted. Here’s one of them:

Check out this video of Alan with another:


On the subject of netting, before arriving I was told that if you’re counting fish, you count hook-ups, because you might only net 30% of these fish. The rest of the time, they’ll wrap you around something underwater, or jump and get off, or bend your hook straight, or loop downstream from you in the fast water and shake their heads until the hook pulls loose (which they do consistently). My observation is that the big boys are better at getting off than the “small” fish, and you end up having to be pretty good in all aspects of the contest, when you’ve hooked one of the big ones, if you’re going to net him. For instance, one of the guys fishing while we were there seemed to lose all his tackle every time he had a fish on. Was he playing them too hard? Or were his knots weak, giving out as soon as they were put under stress? In the fast water, and with the big fish, I think a 30% netting rate is excellent – in the slower water, I think the guys did better than 30%.

So how big were the fish? The biggest fish I saw caught was 27 inches or so. Plenty were between 16 and 20. Here’s Alex with a nice fish.

And one of the striking things is, the SMALLEST fish I saw was maybe 14 inches. No dinkers here, boy.
Even the small guys were built like linebackers, with big shoulders and slabs of muscle.

I’ve never been much of a fan of the longer bamboo rods (8-1/2 foot and longer), once I cast some of the best 7- to 8-foot tapers out there, but this is one piece of water that requires some length – not just for mending, although that helps, but also because you need leverage to lift 10 feet of leader with 3 or 4 BBS on it, out of the water, before you can even begin to cast. Not to mention the Wyoming wind, that can tie your leader into a Gordian knot with one extra false cast. The more efficiently you get the leader out of the water, backwards and forwards where you want it, the better. A Dickerson 8615, which Alan swears by, is now in the plans.  Glenn was casting one of Alan's Payne 104s, and that was a beautifully-casting  rod for those waters, as well.

Once again, thanks Alan, Glenn, Joe and Alex.
Lee