August 2021 – Southern Tier Fly Fisher

I saw Gabe driving his truck towards me as I took a walk during lunch at work. He stopped when he saw me and after some small talk, asked, “Can you repair a broken fly rod”? I hesitated in responding, then said I had never repaired a rod but would look into it and get back to him.

I’ve built nine fly rods to date, each a better version of the last. With each build I’ve learned new techniques, new tricks of the trade, and more efficient methods. But rod repair was an entirely new frontier.

So I researched it. For one, this repair involved marrying together two broken rod pieces, or so I thought. I later learned, upon receipt of the broken rod, that it was two broken sections of the tip piece of a two piece rod. But YouTube is really a great learning resource. In no time I found very good instruction on the method for repairing a broken rod. The key is the use of a spigot ferrule to rebuild the break.

Mending a fly rod takes time, care, and ultimately a bit of love. Gabe made the mistake of trying to beach a steelhead – a 10 pounder – and he let his non-grip hand slide up the blank to do it – an often fatal error. The butt section of a fly rod is where the power is – increasing leverage up the blank just stresses the upper section of the rod blank.

So I took the broken tip section of the blank, shattered graphite – each section jagged and splintered – and thought, “this should be interesting”. I bought a Dremel to even out the bones of each broken section so they’d join as evenly as possible. The fractures in the graphite traveled up the blank with micro cracks, making it difficult to decide where to draw the line on the repair. Cut more of the blank away and you shorten the rod and subsequently alter the way the pieces fit in terms of diameter, and the action as well. Leave the fracture and wrap up to cover it to a reasonable extent and one is left with the nagging question about how far up the blank the fractures could propagate, and possibly fail again.

I did my best, remembering the pictures Gabe showed me of steelhead caught on that stick, pictures of his young boys gathered about the big fish, smiling and proud of Dad. Gabe explained he’d really like to pass the rod on to his boys while he used the new Aetos he got as a replacement from Fenwick.

Turns out this rod has had half as many lives as a cat supposedly does, it’s lineage starting with a 12 weight of all things with an extra fore grip for saltwater big game that Gabe used to slay big Kings on the Salmon River. Some big King broke that rod, and Fenwick replaced it, as it did time and again for failure on the water. The 12 was replaced with another 12, then an 11, and then the 10 that I had for surgery. Gabe’s last go-round with Fenwick for warranty replacement ended with an 8/9 weight Aetos. But as he said to me, “if I could repair the current rod, why not let it live another life”…

So surgery started with a plan. The surgery consisted of cutting back the damaged blank, fitting it with a spigot ferrule, gluing the sections together, wrapping them like a true ferrule, and sealing / coating the wrap with marine spar varnish.

Since I had nothing to use for a spigot ferrule (i.e., old blanks, broken rods, etc.,), I had to purchase a cheap blank. I chose a 9 foot 8 weight 4 piece fast action fly rod blank. Each spigot ferrule is actually composed of two ferrules; a primary that in this case extended 2″ either side of the break, and a secondary, that is inserted into the primary spigot ferrule and adds extra support to the fly rod’s stress point and helps taper the primary spigot ferrule.

Shown above at the top of this picture is the fly rod with the cleaned up break. Below the fly rod is the primary spigot ferrule that is inserted into the blank, extending roughly 2″ either side of the break when inserted into the blank. The bottom piece is the secondary spigot ferrule that is inserted into the primary spigot ferrule to eliminate the stress point at the fly rod break and help taper the action around the break point.

The secondary (smaller) spigot ferrule is coated with 2 part epoxy and inserted into the primary spigot ferrule. Once the epoxy is dry, the primary spigot ferrule is again coated with 2 part epoxy and inserted up the lower end of the broken blank and this forms the male spigot ferrule.

Shown here is the primary spigot ferrule epoxied in place in the butt section of the broken fly rod. The next step is to epoxy the female ferrule in place.

Once the male spigot ferrule is epoxied to the upper female end of the blank, the joint is allowed to cure. Alignment of guides from both pieces is obviously critical.

The joined rod is shown here – as nicely as the two broken ends can be aligned, there will always be a small gap. The two internal spigot ferrules will allow the joint to work and taper the action.

20+ years ago, fly rod designs didn’t allow for a continuous diameter or taper in the blank. The upper section had to flare dramatically to fit over the lower section and still have enough strength to withstand flexing, so there was often a significant difference in rod diameter from one inch below the ferrule to one inch above it. This led to some sloppy rod action and breakage problems.

The original tip over butt or sleeve ferrule. Note the increased thickness of the ferrule as compared to the blank. This added bulk was needed to prevent the ferrule from failing before the advancements in fly rod design and materials.

The internal ferrule, on the other hand, while more labor-intensive to build, allowed for a continuous diameter from below the ferrule to above because the upper section didn’t have to fit over the entire diameter of the section below it. With more consistent diameters and tapers, internal-ferrule rods provided smoother action. They are still used by some fly rod manufacturers. Scott fly rods, for one, still uses the internal or spigot ferrule on its classic “G” series of medium action fly rods.

Once both breaks were joined and cured, it was time to wrap over the break. As improved as fly rod design and materials are, wraps are still used to reinforce the female ferrule. In the case of this break, I needed to make sure the female and male ends were reinforced as microcracks at the original break point could migrate under the stress of flexing and eventually lead to failure.

Wrapping started roughly an inch below the break and ended an inch above the break. Once this was complete, I applied 7 coats of Epifanes Marine Spar Varnish to the wraps, beginning with the varnish cut 50% with mineral spirits so it could thoroughly penetrate the wrapping thread. Each coat was allowed to dry 24 hours before the next application. After the final coat, I allowed the rod to dry several days before testing the rod with lawn casting.

Repaired sections of the fly rod shown at roughly 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock in the upper portion of this picture…

Focused picture of one of the repairs, lower right glossy black. In retrospect, I should have used a lighter gray thread and a non-glossy varnish so the repair blended in with the blank better.

Casting the finished rod – the Fenwick HMX 9 foot 10 weight easily laid out 40+ feet of WF10 floating line. While I never cast the original, the repaired fly rod felt beautiful and buttery smooth in hand. My dog, Maddie seems to approve, giving a loud bark at the end!

And so with the rod complete, I handed it back to Gabe, but on one condition. I asked for pictures; smiling faces, huddled about a lake-run steelhead held up high and a 10 weight fly rod in the foreground, a mended soul, a family treasure returned…

In memory of Donald A. Calder
A great bass fisherman, an even better fisher of men…
9/5/29 – 8/3/15

I quartered my streamer up-current and let it sink, dead drift, in the river braid. As it swept past me, I pulled it back in short strips interspersed with a pause – letting the olive marabou and the silly legs of the fly do an enticing water dance. Midway back the fly stopped abruptly and I swept-set the hook. My fly rod took a deep bend with the pull of a solid fish. Nothing exploded skyward on the set, so I knew this was not a smallmouth bass. Whatever this was just throbbed in the current, moving powerfully upriver, then twisting back with random but decidedly heavy surges that tested my drag. The fight continued a time; a tug of war followed by heavy sullen plodding. I started to think I had a big channel catfish on the line.

The fish continued the fight even at my feet, then finally emerged, turning away once more with the slap of its tail. I saw in that boil of river water, green and gold and white and began to wonder about this “catfish.” Then I brought to hand the biggest walleye of my fly fishing life…

I pulled him up carefully, respectful of his canines and sharp gill plates, and laid him where the river lapped the bank. Standing back with camera in hand, I marveled at his length, the green mottling of his back against golden-hued flanks and his ivory-white underbelly. His river camouflage was that of a warplane – coloring that made him invisible against the sky from below and perfectly invisible against the river bottom when seen from above.

After a quick picture I returned the walleye to the river. With one hand beneath his broad pectoral fins and the other grasping the narrow of his tail, I held him head-up into the current. His gills flared and as I felt the life come back to him, I loosened my grip at the base of his tail. With a strong sway of his head he pulled away and slipped back to the river, swimming slowly across the braid, melting into the bottom. And that is when I remembered Don and smiled to myself at the thought of his disdain for walleyes: “they fight like a bag of rocks”, I’d heard him say on more than a few occasions.

“All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.”
John Steinbeck

It was in August of 2015 that I got a call from Bill – Don’s son and a best high school friend – that Don had passed away from cancer. And so I made my way down to northern New Jersey on a hot humid day to attend his memorial service and to give the family my personal condolences. The service was light-hearted, as I am sure Don would have wanted it. Afterwards, there was a reception at “The Legion”, a place Don frequented to have a beer with old warriors.

Now, some 6 years since Don forever hung up his spinning rod, I continue to fly fish and I think of Don. I target the smallmouth bass, my favorite gamefish – and Don’s favorite as well. But us anglers cannot always choose the fish that respond to our offerings. And on that recent foggy summer morning, a walleye took my fly, and Don came down to earth…

A part of my personal philosophy is that fishermen are born but never really die. Those that eventually slip the grips of gravity end up hanging around us, the water-bound, and watch the casts we make. We are reminded of these old fishermen in odd ways. When I am lucky enough on my home water, a nice smallmouth will launch skyward after taking my streamer and will invariably bring a smile to my face just as it did for Don. I pass an angler at the fishing access, enjoying a cold can of Budweiser after a hot day on the river, and I am again reminded of him, a tall lanky guy who sported a ball of a beer belly later in life, and who was rarely seen when land-borne without a Bud in hand. The wind whips up on the river and there he is again – Don just hated the wind, though as a spin fisherman, I never completely understood why – us fly fishers have a bit more of a valid objection. Pike remind me of him too – that peculiar smell of their slime has never left me ever since first landing one on a big Mepps spinner fished from Don’s boat. And of course there are stories from times I did not fish with him – the time Don used a large spring-device to keep a pike’s toothy yap open while removing a hook. After removing the hook, Don released the pike, forgetting that he needed to remove the spring!

Don was more than a fisherman who could tell stories. He could engage one so very well that once he caught you, it was rare you’d ever want to be released from his sense of humor and maybe too, his wisdom. For memories of fish and fishermen have always been magical in their ability to grow larger than life. The smallmouth Don caught and released will always be bigger than my own. This is a fisherman’s right, just as it is to pick and choose the stories that we leave behind. And, as with Don, a fisherman but always first a fisher of men, some of them scorn walleyes…

Month: August 2021

A broken stick…

Remembering Don…

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