A Tale of Two Fly Rods or An Angler's Odyssey

The following post was first published two summers ago. Recent events brought it to mind, and I thought it deserved another run.

A Tale of Two Fly Rods or An Angler's Odyssey

My father started me fly fishing thirty-one years ago. In fact, I caught my first trout on a fly in July of 1979. I remember the day well: the fish, the water, and my father's incredulous expression. I also remember the rod. It was a fiberglass Garcia; an eight footer painted electric blue. It was just the kind of thing that would appeal to a six year-old child of the seventies.

I remember needing to use both hands to cast, hooking that first trout, and eventually using big-blue to catch more panfish than I could ever hope to count. I fished that beast for a decade before earning enough money to buy a new, high-tech graphite stick. I no longer have either rod, but I wish I still had the Garcia.

Nearly a decade before I hooked that first diminutive brownie, the man who would eventually sire my fishing partner, Ben Jose,  was bouncing around the American west. Born and raised in Idaho, Forrest "Milo" Jose was no stranger to trout or to fly fishing. He fished his native Idaho. He fished Wyoming. He fished Montana when Montana was Argentina, and like me - he did it all with a fiberglass Garcia. To be exact, he did it with a Conolon model 2536-T, 7' 9" fast taper fly rod.

How can I be sure of the rod he used? Well, forty years after Milo was married, moved to New York, and forsook fishing to be a father, his son found Dad's old rod and reel tucked away in a dusty corner of the garage. The reel was a disaster; paint flaked away from the metal, and ancient grease jammed the spring.

The two, staggered sections of the rod had been held together with rubber bands for over three decades, and while I'm not sure it's possible for fiberglass to develop a set, it sure seemed that way. The cork was pitted, and the metal ferrules hopelessly tarnished. The single stripping guide was missing; other guides were corroded and in need of polish or replacement. All the wraps screamed for a fresh coat of varnish.

I suppose the rod was fishable, but Ben was determined for his father to revisit those days in the Rockies, and he wanted Milo to have something better than a "fishable" outfit. Ben used his resources as a foundryman to make the reel whole again (the entire process is detailed here). For my part, I did some research, and corresponded with folks who had their old rods - both fiberglass and bamboo - refinished.

After hours of Googling, emailing, and debate, I settled on a gentleman who came very highly recommended, one whose name is especially known in cane-nut circles. After a short correspondence, the rod was sent along with some very specific instructions: regardless of cost, please replace the missing guide with an agate stripper, rewrap and revarnish the guides (replace as needed), clean up the ferrules and be sure they fit together properly, clean the cork, and ink a very special message along the shaft of the rod.

"Happy Father's Day Dad ... Love, Ben."

Can you think of a better gift for a son to give his father? I've tried, and I cannot.

Ben and I both understood that the Garcia 2536-T was hardly collector's item. We knew that the cost of the work we requested would likely be ten times the value of the rod - if the rod was in pristine, unfished condition, and it wasn't. We didn't care. This was a gift for Milo. This was Ben saying to his father, "I love you Dad, I appreciate all you've done for me ... all you've sacrificed. Thank you." We were very disappointed when the rod found its way back to us just days before Father's Day.

The ferrules were cleaned, but little else was done in accordance with our request. A cheap wire - not agate or mildrum, but wire - stripping guide was mounted with thread that did not nearly match the thread on the other guides. None of the guides were polished or replaced. The cork was not cleaned. Not a speck of new varnish covered any of the wraps. A Post-It Note bearing Ben's message to Milo was stuck to the shaft. Included with the rod was a bill for $40.00. Forty dollars to have a lousy wire guide wrapped. Ben had been willing to pay up to $200.00 to have the work done properly.

As Bennie and I sat at my dining room table, sharing a six-pack and lamenting the mindset that allows someone to do shoddy, haphazard work, I thought to grab my laptop. I visited Ebay, and typed "Garcia fly rod" into the search string. Miraculously - and I couldn't possibly make this up - a 2536-T Fast Taper 7' 9" fly rod in new, unfished condition (with original sock and tube no less) was the first item up for bid. We won the auction - in fact we were the only bidder - and before our payment was ever processed, the very gracious seller overnighted us the rod so that Milo could have it in time for Dad's Day.

And Mr. Jose could not have been more pleased. We all spent the morning on one of our favorite ditches. I played guide, and everyone caught a few fish; nothing huge, but enough to remind Milo of what it felt like to be a twenty-something fly flinger. He smiled, and then Ben smiled.

I thought it a privilege to see a father and his adult son share a moment like that. I'm happy to have played my part, and I hope that someday my own boy might think enough of me to put so much effort into one afternoon on the stream with his old man.

Milestones

*** Disclaimer ... All that follows is very personal in nature, and probably not worth your time. If you're looking for fishing photos, casting videos, or a fly tying how-to article then this post will not be for you. Go get your car's oil changed or yourself a piece of pie ... if I were you then cherry or apple would be my first choices, but I suppose Key-lime or chocolate cream would suffice. ***

I remember the first time I ever recognized the pride my father felt at witnessing one of my accomplishments. I was nineteen years old, and for much of my adolescent life I had been something of a prodigal son. Throughout high school I was a poor student, but not because I couldn't handle the work. Rather, I lacked focus and ambition, and like so many of my peers I was more concerned with girls than grades. I drank alcohol to excess, came home far past curfew most nights of the week, and even had a brush or two with the law. My parents tried, but the more they tried the less inclined was I to do the same.

Even twenty odd years after the fact, the reminiscence is tinged with regret. My mother and father deserved better, and I was too stubborn, too juvenile to understand a son's duty to his family. Fortunately, time has a way of healing the rifts between parents and their children, and I think this is especially true of fathers and their sons.

For my father and I, the process of reconciliation began one chilly November morning on the red-clay parade fields of Fort Benning, Georgia. On that day, I stopped being a delinquent child, and started being a man. On that cold November day, so many miles from home, my mother pinned a blue cord on the right shoulder of my uniform, a cord that signified my status as an infantry soldier in the United States Army. My father shook my hand, looked straight into my eyes, and told me that he was proud. I felt - both in the steel of his eyes and the stone of his grip - that he meant what he said. He was proud, truly and genuinely proud.

That moment was for me a rite of passage. My parents, my father in particular, saw me differently on that day. Even though my path was so often uncertain, on that day I managed to navigate my way out of the morass of my youth, and become the person Mom and Dad had known I could be and had so hoped I would be. After my service was fulfilled and I returned home, my father treated me not so much as his child but as his peer. We talked as men talk, and together we did the things that fathers and their grown sons do.

These memories were refreshed on a recent trip to the river as a friend and I drove along a country road that parallels the river's course. As we navigated its many twists and turns, we passed a young boy of maybe 10 or 12 years and a man that was almost certainly his father. The boy was seated behind the wheel of a well worn, emerald green John Deer lawn tractor. His father was explaining - quite vigorously explaining - the purpose behind each pedal, button and lever. Next to the tractor, seemingly discarded in favor of the larger piece of machinery, was a walk-behind push mower. To my eye, the scene had the appearance of a graduation. The boy had reached some sort of landscaping benchmark, and was being rewarded with the tractor and his father's guarded trust.

Accompanied by thoughts of the boy, his father, and memories of my own passage into manhood, I quickly settled into a cast-step rythym, flailing the water as best I could. Before long I was into a good fish, which I quickly played, photographed, and released.

My eyes followed the brown as it swam off into the current, eventually losing itself amongst the cobble. I waded downstream a stretch, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching my friend - who had been learning to double-haul - cast to rising fish. I thought of the pain I endured while learning the same cast. I thought of the years I spent on the bends and twists of the river. I thought about that last fish, and I thought about my first fish. I thought about the milestones I've passed as an angler; milestones that have made me - at least as much as having been a soldier or a son - the person I am today.

That is - perhaps more than anything else - what those folks who don't fish may never understand about those of us who do. The milestones we encounter as fishermen are sometimes as significant as any other we might experience in the various facets of our lives. Learning to cast and then learning to cast well, tying that first perfectly proportioned fly, hooking our first fish and landing the last: we learn something from each of these and myriad other moments. Not only do they make us better anglers, but oftentimes they makes us better people.

Yes ... the river is both instructive and redemptive. She teaches us patience, and the need to sometimes move more slowly. She teaches us to forgive ourselves of our failings, and to see past our partners' peccadilloes. She shows us triumph and disappointment alike - often in the same afternoon - and we learn to smile regardless. Perhaps more than anything else, the river teaches us hope. Hope for that next fish. Hope for a better day. Hope that we'll recognize the importance of the moment when the moment happens.

And it may just be that hope is the very best of things.