Wow, it’s been way too long since my last blog post. After a couple of months of staying at home and hibernating in my workshop, I’ve been able to get out on some of our more isolated waters here in Central Oregon. Caught some big fish…caught some smaller fish…but it has been great to get back out with my bamboo rods. With no stories attached, here are a few pictures of my exploits over the past two weeks.
I’ve always used snake guides on my bamboo fly rods that have a bronze finish. I’m not fond of a chrome finish on guides, and the bronze finish blends very well with the color of bamboo. Unfortunately, bronzed guides are no longer available so I’ve been working for the past couple of weeks to do my own bronzing on my guides. The early results are looking very promising, but I still have a little more testing to do. So far, I’ve come up with a very slight bronze color, all the way to almost black, playing around with time and temperature in the bronzing solution. Here is an example of my test samples:
I recently discovered a great new wood for reel seats on my rods. Kingwood is a member of the Rosewood family. It’s one of the hardest of the rosewoods, and as such, can be a little challenging to work with. But, with very sharp tools, it turns well on my lathe. It has a little more of a purple color than most of the rosewoods along with many black streaks in it. Once it is finished with a nice oil finish, the purple turns into a deep red color, let’s call it a “Cabernet” color! Here is what it looks like once it is finished.
I got out on the Middle Deschutes River about 30 minutes from my house yesterday with my good friend, Jonathan Walter, from Denver. What a beautiful day on the river. I set Jonathan up with one of my medium fast action 7′ 6″ 5 wt bamboo rods and I took out my 9′ 0″ 4 wt bamboo EuroNymphing rods. We had a great time tempting the feisty browns and rainbows…Jonathan did well swinging wet flies through the riffles and I picked up quite a few fish on a yellow sally nymph in the faster water. Here are a couple photos of our afternoon.
I just finished another Bamboo Trout Net this week. This one is headed to my good friend and fishing buddy, Dale, who lives in Idaho. Dale is one of the best lake anglers I know, and since he does a lot of float tubing, he choose one of my 32″ Float Tube Nets. I know he’ll be very happy with this net.
