I spent some time this week with Charlotte, my newest rod building class student. She’s making great progress, and keeps proclaiming “This is way too much fun!”. Here she is running bamboo strips through the Bellinger Hand Planers Friend. Next up for her…straightening strips and starting the hand planing process. Here is Charlotte in action:
Running the Bellinger Beveler
Eric Neufeld (http://www.facebook.com/ragingriversales) sent me this great photo of a cutthroat he recently caught with one of my bamboo fly rods….Eric owns two of them. This beautiful cutthroat was caught on a 7′ 0″ 4 wt Spring Creek Series Rod I built for Eric a few years ago. Photo credit goes to Heather Hodson.
A Great Cutthroat Trout
Sometimes, the pictures just come out right, although I did a little cropping on this photo. Here is a beautiful Deschutes River Redside I picked up a few days ago. Enjoy!
Deschutes River Rainbow
I had a great time this week getting out with our friends from the Seattle area, Kelli and Russ, on the Metolius River. After a couple of hours of fishing, I asked them if they wanted to try my bamboo fly rods for a bit of dry fly fishing….and got very quick “you bet” from both of them. I put a 7′ 6″ 5 wt rod in each of their hands and we fished together for about 45 minutes. Although the fish were very interested in our dry flies, we had a great time. While I haven’t converted them over to bamboo just yet, they got a taste of what it’s like. Here we are on the stream with our rods.
Kelli and Russ trying out my bamboo fly rods with me on the Metolius River
I just got back from 5 days down in Northern California fly fishing with a 5 friends from the Bay Area with whom I’ve been fishing for 30 years. We spent several days fishing Hat Creek and Manzanita Lake. Lots of fun fishing nymphs and dries on Hat Creek, and chironomids on Manzanita Lake. I fished my 8′ 0″ 5 wt slow action Spring Creek Series bamboo rod during this trip, and it produced well. Here are a few photos from my trip.
A #14 tan ant pattern that worked well during the day on Hat Creek.
A nice Hat Creek Rainbow that took my ant pattern.
A colorful Salmon Fly hanging out in the grass.
A small but colorful little brown that took a #14 Elk Hair Caddis dry.
A nice unusually colored brown trout that took a #16 Pale Evening Dun pattern one evening on Hat Creek.
Launching our float tubes at Manzanita Lake.
A beautiful Manzanita Lake Brown trout that took a #14 black and red chironomid.
This big rainbow took a #16 brown and green chironomid pattern.