Hi,

While reading John Scott's thread, where he was fishing his boo rod pretty much exclusively, I recieved an e-mail from Fly Goddess putting me onto Zhu rods, sold on e-bay. They are not expensive rods, but if FG is willing to recommend them for what they are, then they must be good rods.

Well, this put me in a bit of a quandary. A wee while back I had mentioned to Vanessa that I didn't need any more rods really. I have a 3, 5, 7/8, and an old fibreglass salmon rod. How could I save face? I thought back to that conversation, and I recalled giving an "out" for a bamboo rod, but that I was not going to spend $1,000+ on a fishing rod.

I realised, this was my out. A bit of careful planning out the logic of the pitch and I'm sure it would be ok. Well, I started with the soft approach of how there were these inexpensive bamboo rods on E-bay and showed her the auction. Getting ready to mention how someone on the board has one and really likes it, etc, when she suggested I get one if we had some left over pounds when we were leaving the UK. That was easy!

Anyway, we had the cash in our account, ordered it, and expected it to arrive a while back. It didn't arrive, so we contacted the seller. He apologised, and indicated that some orders had been returned to him due to custom forms being filled out incorrectly, and that it should arrive in a few days. We did, and still wasn't here. He apologised again, and indicated that if he had to send a replacement he would include a silk line as well as a gift.

We asked him to send us the tracking number, which he did. We looked it up and it seemed to indicate that there was an attempt to deliver last week. It was being sent to a post office box, in the post office, not to our house address. So, down I went to find out what's going on. Turns out, the post office had it for the past week. They appear to have forgot to put the parcel notice in the box!

Anyway, I've had it out for a lawn cast and I really like the feel of it. It's a 7' 6" 5 weight, two piece, two tips, and I like it, yes sir, I like it a lot!

Here are some photo's of the boo:







- Jeff