It seems like I never tire of photographing my rods as I get them completed and ready to send along to customers all over the world. For want of a better place to show these pictures, I have decided to put together a catch all page for various rods on various blanks with various fittings. This is sort of a glorified additional page to my "Pictures" and "More Pictures" pages. Expect to see all kinds of combinations here in the coming year.

I come to know customers as friends over the years. A couple years ago a customer in Utah had me do a couple rods for him over the winter. He spoke of frequently visiting Yellowstone to fish the Firehole early season and hopefully we might run into each other some time in June. One evening while fishing the riffle water above the canyon two fellows came along the path and the older of the two glanced down to me intent on a couple risers and asked Dave Lewis? Well, I don't know if I am recognizable or if the cosmos just connected but it was indeed Dan from Utah and his son walking back from their evening fishing. We had a nice chat and compared notes and generally enjoyed the opportunity to make the connection.

One of the rods he had me do was on a blank he purchased and sent along to me. It was a Payne blank. I don't know the history or the company other than the reference to the Paynes of cane fame. The rod above is another on the same blank I finished and sent along today to his long time friend from New York. Bob, on Dan's recommendation, had me do a nice soft 8'6" rod for him last year and was quite taken with the Payne rod I did for Dan so had me do one of those for him this year.

I seldom use down locking reel seats, but Bob requested one, so I ordered this lovely Struble U20 seat with cocobola wood insert to complement the burgandy color of the rod blank.

Burgandy blanks do best with deep reds and maroons. I used a deep maroon thread with my traditional tan trim on this rod. Bob wanted his rod to be a slightly different color from his friend Dan's rod which I used a deep brown wrap on.

A nice nickel silver winding check complements the wonderful polish of the U20 seat, completing the integrity of the grip and reel seat.

Bob's friend Dan was originally from Pennsylvania and often fished the streams of my youth. Every year he travels back to Pennsylvania to get together with Bob and a couple other fellows to fish those waters that have remained pretty much unchanged over the many years I've known them. Pennsylvania unlike most populated states of the east has retained ownership and access to most of its forested areas, grouping them under the general heading of "State Game Lands." The mountains of Central Pennsylvania have vast areas of unspoiled wilderness that are coursed by hundreds of miles of prime trout waters. Though the fish are small they are the real thing. We are lucky to have folks like Dan and Bob who value the real fish and the real waters. The truly special places of my beginnings.

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Will is a good friend and good customer in Florida who has bought several rods from me over the last few years. Though he lives a long way from trout waters, trout rods are his passion, especially pretty ones and delicate ones. On a winter skiing trip to Montana he handled a Sage TXL rod a bit and decided he needed for me to do a 2 wt for him. He contacted me by email as he has in the past and we settled on the rod you will see below. Unfortunately Mary caught wind of the new light trout rod and let Will know that she too wanted a lovely TXL rod to work the Montana waters next summer so I did two of them, the 2 wt for Will and a 3 wt for Mary. There they are in their tubes ready to pack up and ship out to them tomorrow.

One thing they were quite sure about was the Venneri Upslide reel seat with the knob on the end. I have not been able to get these seats from Bob since he quit doing seats last year, but have found the Bellinger model is just about identical to Bob's and available in a variety of exotic woods. The one above is an ash burl and the one below is an amboyna burl.

Because the wood is resin impregnated, it is very hard and durable and holds the reel just as firmly as a screw lock seat does. These seats are my most popular for the TXL rods, though I have done several with small diameter screwlock seat this winter.

Here you see them all together. Mary's rod, the 3 wt, is at the top and Will's rod, the 2 wt, is the lower one. TXL blanks are a golden tint with just a trace of flake in the finish. Sage does a heavy clear coat over a translucent metalic base which is very durable and very deep. I use a golden tan thread to complement the blank color. It turns a deep golden brown when I apply the varnish. The trim thread is a deep tan as is the ink that Mary Lu uses for the writing. As you can see, I used a nice gently tapering cigar grip for these rods, both fairly slim so they will be delicate yet comfortable. The small diameters of the TXL blanks really makes my varnish finish come into its own. I find these rods the easiest to reach perfection with.

Mary Lu's velour Honey Bear rod bag completes the package. Notice the nice embroidery work at the top of the bag. Our bags are several inches longer than the rod, so that you fold the top part down over to keep the rod sections from working out and rubbing against the wall of the rod tube. It always works best to put the butt section in the bag with the grip end at the bottom so the additional bulk of the foldover flap at the top doesn't cramp the whole works when you put your rod away. I am one of the few rod makers still using aluminum rod tubes. The industry has gone almost completely to codura covered plastic tubes which are cheap and warp from the hot sun in the back of your SUV. My tubes are durable and attractive. I have always tried to purchase from my friends, thus the Bob Venneri reel seats and the Landmark rod tubes. Friend Ron of Landmark has kept me in quality tubes for years.

Off the rods went today. Will and Mary will be getting them by the weekend and can soon be planning their spring and summer jaunts for wild trout.

Mark is a new customer from Pennsylvania. We corresponded for some time trying to come up with a good all around rod that would come in between his present two rods, a Loomis 9' 5 wt and a 6'6" Orvis. We concentrated in the 8' range, giving thought to some of the blanks I build under my Signature blank series. None of them seem to quite fill the gap, so we concentrated mostly on Sage offerings. It seemed to me an SLT blank would be a little on the soft side for what he wanted to do with it, as would the TXL 7'10" blanks. We finally settled on a VT2 7'9" 4 wt four piece rod. It is a nice fast action rod like his Loomis rod, yet a lighter line weight and shorter length that will work well in small and medium waters. Since it is constructed of really high strength materials it has the reserve to handle a 5 wt line when he wants to use it with really big bugs. I think it will be just the right rod for him.

We talked about components and decided on nickel silver fittings and a Classic Half Wells grip. I have always liked the Struble U20 reel seat. The fiddleback maple inserts give such a nice contrast and really complement the rich blue of the blank and the deep blue of the wraps.

I've come to really enjoy doing trout rods now. Large, heavy saltwater rods were a fascination for a long time and such good sellers, but, with my new varnish finish, the shorter, smaller diameter wraps on trout rods are so much easier to do than the large wraps of saltwater rods. As you can see in the picture above, the smoothness and gloss of spar varnish is second to none.

I sent Mark a picture of his rod a couple days ago and got it packed up just a while ago and took it to the Post Office. He told me he had sent final payment so I imagine it will all cross in the mail. It's always a special pleasure to do a rod for a fellow fisher from my native Pennsylvania. I'm sure he will enjoy Pennsylvania streams with his new rod just as I always have.

I've been corresponding with Vladimir from the Czech Republic for about a month now. He came onto my web site and was quite taken with my rods and decided he needed a Sage blank rod for his small stream fishing in his woodsy Eastern European streams. I've sent my rods all over the world but never to the Czech Republic.

Having virtually no knowledge of what trout fishing might be like in Eastern Europe, I asked him to send me a couple pictures of the streams he fishes. He said this has been an extremely mild winter and spring fishing has already gotten under way. I was amazed at just how much those streams look like so many small to medium sized streams I fish in Pennsylvania.

Since he also needed a good fly line to go with the rod, I ordered a Sage Quiet Double Taper line for him. I think it will be just the line for the short to medium distance casts he will be making in his favorite waters. Unfortunately the line has taken an extra week to get and I won't get his rod out to him till tomorrow. I think he would almost be willing to swim the Atlantic to pick it up after a month of varnish curing and waiting for the line to come along.

The rod he decided on is the Sage 7'6" 3 wt SLT blank rod. The SLT blanks are a nice compromise between delicate and soft and bit faster action with some reserve power for heavier flies and a bit of wind. The other similar alternative is the TXL rod, like the ones that Will and Mary above had me do for them. The SLR rod will give Vladimir a little more versatility to handle a greater range of flies in a greater range of conditions. I'm anxious to hear how it works out for him.
This was one of Bob Venneris small diameter screw lock seats I have left. This one has a nice cocobola wood insert. The reddish color of the wood is a nice complement to the reddish brown of the wraps.

Considering the Sage series replacement cycle of their high end rods, this might be the last year for the SLT rods. I will be sorry to see them go. They have been wonderfully comfortable rods.

It is always a pleasure to get to know new folks in this little business of mine. I'm always amazed at the common bond fly fishing has created for so many of us all over the world.

Jerry is from California and fishes a lot of small streams in his travels. He looked hard at the TXL rods on my web site but didn't see a 7' 4 wt. in my price list. Hoping to have a 4 wt. to handle a little larger flies, he contacted me about a special build. I try and keep as many TXL rods in stock as I possibly can, but, since they are my best sellers, they are always in demand. I had to special order the blank in hopes that Sage would have it in stock. This has been a banner year for Sage, and they have really been battling their inventory. It took a while to get the blank, but I got a good start on it in early February and am ready to ship it out tomorrow March 19. That has been about my normal turn around this winter. It takes me about a week or two to get the rod built and three weeks or so for the varnish to cure.
Jerry looked over my various reel seats that I use on my many different models of rods and decided he would like the small diameter screwlock in nickel silver with a nice maple burl insert. I have had a lot of trouble getting reel seats this year since Bob has limited his production to just a few seats from time to time. This one is a very nice Bellinger seat.
To complement the quite fine knurls of the Bellinger seats, I've gone to a tight angled knurl winding check that Struble does for me. As you can see in the picture above it is very nicely done.

Sage TXL blanks have become my favorites to build since I've gone to the spar varnish finish. They are small diameter and the shorter wraps allow the varnish to flow nicely, enabling the gracefully sculptured wraps I have come to be known for. I think most folks agree they are quite attractive.

Arthur's Brook Trout Rod

Arthur is a new customer from Maine. In spite of Maine being a fly fishing haven, I have very few customers who live up there, though a bunch of my New England customers undoubtedly enjoy the pristine waters of Maine whenever they get a chance. Arthur wanted a nice all around small stream brookie rod, so he asked if I could do a Sage TXL 7'10" 4 wt rod for him. I had a blank in stock so I told him I could get at it right away.

When I went to start on it, I found the first ferrule was a clicker. Out of the hundreds of Sage blanks I've used over the years, poor ferrule fit, or crookedness or any other flaws have been so infrequent that I just never bother to look at the blanks I order till I get started on them. This one was a surprise. I sent it back to Sage and they were unable to get me a replacement blank set for about a month since all their blanks are going to rod production. It seems this is an absolutely banner year for just about everybody in the industry, so most everything is in short supply. I finally got the blank back in February and got started on the rod.

As I've said above, I'm pretty well out of Bob Venneri's reel seats, but I had this nice screwlock with a dandy zebra wood insert. The colors of zebra wood complement the blank and wrap colors of the TXL rods quite nicely. Zebra wood is very hard and durable when it is impregnated with the resin Bob uses to stabilize his reel seat inserts. It makes for a very tough, water proof combination.

As you can tell by the rods shown on this page, TXL rods are among my best selling rods this year. Unfortunately, I've just about sold everything I was able to get blanks for and build this winter, so I am left with only a couple rods for stock and summer orders.

Mary Lu finished up the rod bag for Arthur's rod this morning. She did the writing on it over the weekend, so it was ready to pack up and ship out this afternoon. It is now on its way to him. Hopefully he will enjoy the TXL rod as much as I enjoyed building it for him.

Philip's Tarpon Rod

I've gotten aquainted with Philip in the UK through two brothers, Martin and Jonathan, who are avid saltwater fly fishers. Each spring they travel to fairly remote destinations to catch exotic species like tarpon and Giant Trevally. This year they are heading to Cuba and their hopes are a couple hundred pound tarpon. Philip didn't have a 12 wt. rod for the trip and contacted me about doing one for him back in the winter. I just finished it in the last couple weeks. The varnish is now cured enough to send it along, and I'll ship it over to him in the UK tomorrow.

I don't do a lot of really heavy saltwater rods. 8 wts. are the most popular size. Anything larger is a real handfull both to build and to use. You can see in the pictures that I use the largest guides available for these rods. The butt stripper is a 20mm ring size with a 16mm above it and the rest #6 and #5 snakes, with an oversized tip top. All that allows for the unlikely possibility of a knot in the line with a hundred pound fish on the other end. That knot has to go somewhere and nobody wants small guides to keep it from going where it will.

To make sure these big guides are going to stay put, I use a double thickness thread wrap. Getting a good smooth varnish finish over all that thread is a challenge at best and a nightmare on a bad day. Luckily I seldom have bad days, now that I have a good handle on my varnish work.

As you can see in the pictures above and below, I have my varnish work pretty well refined to a point of perfection. I think it is every bit the equal of my long standing epoxy work. I'm glad to report it is every bit as durable too.

Here you can see just how large those guides are. The big one above is the first or butt stripper. It is the 20mm one. The snakes are #6's till the tip section where they drop to #5's.

Philip wanted his rod built like a standard saltwater rod without a fighting upper grip. He also wanted the reel seat I use that takes the larger fighting butt with a nice foam bottom on it. That is a very comfortable combination. I also do the 12 wt. with the upper fighting grip. You can see in the picture below both combinations. I always do a bit longer grip on the rod with the upper grip too.

I fully expect to get a couple emails from the brothers and Philip this summer with some pictures of my rods and some absolutely obscene Tarpon.

Dan sent me this nice picture of a lovely little brown he caught back in January in one of his home waters in Utah. You can see the silvery sheen of winter on its glistening sides. The rod is one of the first I did for him a few years back, the start of a long run for both him and his best friend Bob, whose rod I featured at the beginning of this page.

Dan enjoys softer, more delicate rods than is my usual fare and has sent me blanks from Payne, and Thomas and Thomas, and Winston to do for him. He orders the blanks and has them shipped directly to me, then we talk about components, often though pictures, and nail down a set of expectations for me to work with.

Dan respects my style parameters and I respect his wishes. Together we are a good team and the final product is a pleasure for both of us.

As you can see by my label on the rod tube, this is a Winston BIIt 8' 4 wt. rod. Now I'm not all that much up on Winston any more. My bent is pretty much just Sage. I do remember folks lamenting the loss of the classic Winston action, though, giving over to the industry standard fast action with stiff butts and lively tips pretty much the norm. Well anyone who thinks Winston doesn't make a slower action, softer rod that bends its whole length, needs to give this one a look. I haven't cast it and probably better not. I might like it.
Dan has preferred cap and ring reel seats in the past, but this time he decided to go with a nice maple burl Bellinger upslide seat. I've had a hard time getting quality reel seats this year. I had mentioned on my Varnish page that Bob Venneri is no longer doing reel seats; well that is only partially correct. He is doing a few. In fact he did a special one for a rod that I am just finishing for a customer now. Basically, though, I have to hunt and pick through various suppliers to come up with what I need. I lost an order to a potential customer in Germany because I couldn't get an ash burl Bellinger seat to use on a TXL blank for him. Hopefully I'll be able to get one over the summer and can get back with him in the fall.
This blank is the typical Winston green. A deep green thread just about perfectly duplicates the blank color. The trim thread is a mustard tan, but the light makes it much hotter than it really is.

Indirect light makes the colors much more subtle. For the most of my rod pictures, I use a bounce flash from the white ceiling in my office.
This shot and the one above left were done with flood lights. From time to time, I like being able to see the depth of color you get with nylon thread and good varnish. These are the colors you will see in bright sunlight.

Dan always requests that I keep the rod inscription to a minimum. On this rod, in addition to my standard logo, he wanted only the make of the blank and the size.
However, he said he would like to take the memory of his Gordon Setter fishing with him. So I had Mary Lu add just her name as you can see below.
Special rods for special friends are always a pleasure for me. I hope to do many more rods for folks like Dan.

I send my fly rods all over the world. A couple months ago, John called about my doing a special rod for his dad in Poland. He suggested his dad is a tremendous out doors type and needs a good fly rod to enjoy his times with Nature more. We decided on a Sage Xi2 blank saltwater rod with the special inscription you see above. John will take the rod to him when he goes back home in June.

The most popular reel seat for my salt water rods has been the special U6 model Struble has done for me for several years now. They do a special extra relief on the bottom mitered portion that enables a little greater versatility and tremendous strength in securing the heaviest of saltwater reels. Their fine polish and always flawless anodizing sets their saltwater seats apart from everyone elses. A couple different lengths of fighting butts are available for them. This one is the shorter. You can see the longer one on the lower rod in the Philip's Tarpon Rod entry above.

Pennsylvania has a wealth of small streams, many with wild browns and brookies. Jim is from eastern Pennsylvania where small mountain streams and rich meadow spring streams are within easy reach. Sage TXL blank rods are an obvious choice for those waters and their smaller fish. I do a lot more of the 7'10" TXL rods than I do the 7' ones, but for truly small waters the shorter rod is the logical choice. I try and keep a 3 wt in stock, but the 4 wt has been the more popular one this year. Having a little more power enables it to cast larger flies and handle the breezy meadows so common in the east.

Short rods have been some of my most popular over the years. For them I like really small fittings. My absolute favorite reel seat for tiny rods is the Struble U25 model. It is a miniature of the very popular U20 seat that Sage uses on most of its trout rods. I pretty much always use cocobola wood inserts for rods with brownish or burgandy blanks and fiddleback maple for green or blue blanks. Cocobola seems the best choice for this one.

The picture below gives you a good idea of the blank and wrap color. The blank, like all of Sage's different rod lines now, has a bit of flake in the tinted clear coat. It gives them a glow they would't otherwise have.

A More Powerful Rod for Allen

It's been two or three years ago that Allen had me do a 5 wt SLT rod for him to use with his New England trout fishing. Since then he has begun to fish some larger rivers and use larger, heavier flies and is finding the SLT rod is running out of power. His thoughts were in the direction of a line size heavier and perhaps a different series than the SLT. The logical choice was the new Z-axis series from Sage that replaces the XP rods this year.

I've built a couple 5 wts and 6 wts so far this year and have gotten feedback on both of them. The consensus seems to be that they are fairly similar to the XP rods they replace with a little smaller diameters and perhaps a little lighter weight. My observations seem to suggest that the Z-axis might have a little more range from short to long than the XP and might be a little softer, giving a bit better feedback, but the differences are small. Probably not a good reason to replace your XP rod just yet. But then we never need excuses for a new rod do we.

The blank color appears to be just a shade lighter than the XP rods, but is really quite different because it has a good bit of metalic flake in it in comparison to the XP. That flake gives it a glow much like the TXL rods and makes green thread a difficult match. I've tried three different shades of green and think the darkest one works the best.
Mary Lu is a master of color. She looked at the two or three different greens I had used so far and said, "You have a emerald blank there, why not go with a garnet wrap." So there you have it.

You can see in the pictures so far that the reel seat on this one is yet another Bob Venneri seat. I'm down to my last couple now. This one has a extraordinary maple burl, very dense and very unusual.

Troels and I are long standing Internet friends. He leads an unusual lifestyle living on a boat in the many waters of Europe. His native Denmark keeps him much of the time, but he wanders here and there wherever his boat will take him. He will soon be in Paris for the summer. We've talked of his art work - www.troelskirk.com - and my rod work for several years and finally decided on a trade, my rod for a special painting of a westslope cutthroat which he will do some time this summer or next winter.

He told me he doesn't have a good strong, aggressive rod for the many waters he fishes over the summer. He needs something with some power that can handle bigger water and larger flies. The Sage VT2 rods are among their more powerful and should do the job for him.

It seems he has had an unyielding passion for the upslide reel seat I have gotten from Bob Venneri for years, yet he doesn't like cigar grips. To accommodate a gentle transition to the reel seat and keep the grip short, much like a cigar grip, I turned the grip with a much smaller flare in the back than I usually use. I think it is a good compromise grip for him.



Since the reel seat was a primary emphasis, I thought I'd throw in a double life size shot of it. The wood is a maple burl that is impregnated. The resin gets darker with each use, so really dark maple burls are often the result. This one is what I would call a medium dark.








The blank for Troels rod is the Sage VT2 series in a 9' 5 wt. He was fairly taken with the wonderful blue blank color. Like with Mark's rod above, also on a VT2 blank, I use a deep blue wrap with my usual tan trim. I think it is a nice combination.

He told me the other day, he is having trouble deciding which other rod will have to go once he gets this one. Living on a boat, every nook is dedicated to something important. There isn't room for a single extra item.

I'll be starting the rod on its long journy to Denmark tomorrow. I am anxious to get back out to Montana to start getting some pictures of more of my wild cutthroats to send along to Troels so he can get a good handle on the beauty of the fish I enjoy in my summers. Hopefully we will both be pleased with each other's efforts over the coming months.

Alan's Steelhead Rod

I think the major emphasis in Alan's new rod is the reel seat. He had looked at Bob Venneri's seats on his web site and locked into the Esopus model, which is a pretty good choice for a freshwater, longer 8 wt rod. The little extended butt will act as a small fighting butt allowing, a little extra convenience when handling some big fish.

As I've mentioned before, in these pages, Bob is no longer doing much in the way of reel seats, but Alan was persistent and contacted him directly, prompting me to get into the act and indeed get Bob to do one of the lovely seats for us along with a couple small diameter screw locks. Bob is not down or out and surely will do more special items for all of us in the future.

Alan was looking for beauty in a good performing rod. That brought him to me apparently and the striking contrast of the lighter blue blank of the VT2 rods and my deep blue wraps is just the combination Alan was looking for.

Sage's VT2 line of rods is just the right compromise of weight, power, and price to be very attractive to folks who can get my level of craft to turn a medium priced rod into a high end treasure. That was Alan's aim.

He told me the other day that it has begun to give signs of spring and fishing with the big rod can't be far behind. A 9'6" 8 wt will handle some big water and some big fish, so Alan will be ready once the runs get started.

Bob's Ackland Cane Rod

I'm most definitely a graphite rod builder first and pretty much always. I do some glass rods as you know by looking further in my web site, and I've done maybe eight or ten cane rods over the years. This is one of them.

My good friend, Bob, from Tennessee, purchased a Terry Ackland cane rod blank a couple years ago when Terry was still doing rod blanks. I remember corresponding with Terry for a while in regards to the marketing possibilities of cane rod blanks. I don't remember my take on it, but whatever it was, Terry went at it for a spell and this is one of his.

This one is a powerhouse, an 8' 5 wt, with the heft of a gargantuan graphite rod but with a nice finesse about it. I have cast it a bit since I finished it and it does the kind of tight loops to sixty feet you would expect of a Sage XP. Cane guys will probably scoff at that, suggesting that is not what cane is all about. But if you are looking for a cane fishing rod this one is pretty able, though with the weight to develop your biceps.

Hoping to counterbalance a bit of that heft in the rod blank, Bob suggested a little heavier reel seat. I found a very densely burled maple insert, uplocking Bellinger seat to give a little heft behind your hand and hopefully make the whole package seem a little more manageable.

Terry, of course, uses nickel silver ferrules. They didn't go together much at all when I got the blank so I had to do a good bit of fitting to get them to come together with a nice snug fit and separate with a nice pop.

One of the greatest challenges of doing this rod involved Bob's hope for transparent wraps. Actually these wraps are more transparent than these high contrast images suggest. I ordered out silk thread in my familiar size A and went at it. Nylon in any color will definitely not end up transparent. I have never used anything but nylon wrapping thread before and I was quickly into some surprises. Silk doesn't stretch. That might not seem important till you try and get tag ends to hold under the flats of a hex blank. They just won't. You have to pull them way under then coax them to grab at a ridge. Compounding the difficulty of, what is usually a quick and easy step in my rod making, was the fact that silk thread is a good bit nappy in comparison to nylon. I had to do a lot of singeing, with the alcohol lamp. The final results were pretty good, though.

Cutting back the contrast a bit with this shot gives you a little better idea of the transparency of the wraps. Actually much of the color is that of the varnish which has a very amber tone. The trim thread is four turns of scarlet. I think the brightness of that trim thread would be much more apparent on a natural blonde blank. Terry has his blanks impregnated, which darkens them considerably.

Bob hasn't seen the rod yet. I shipped it out just today and haven't told him about this page yet. I think I'll let him get the rod and play with it a bit before I pass this along to him.

Doing rods with real challenges for good friends makes my work worthwhile.

This page has gotten quite large, here at the end of December, so it is time to close it out and move on to next year. Just follow the link here to the 2008 version.