Well, since last posting I finished a 7' 5wt PHY Princess for our daughter-in-law which we will give her this weekend for her birthday. We are headed to The Hungry Trout Lodge on the Ausable River in the Adirondack's and will fish this weekend.

Here is how it turned out:

Laura's Princess2.jpg

But we found out our little granddaughter Emily would be making the trip with us, too, and her graphite rod was packed away. So....

With just a few weeks before we leave I decided to try and make a Quad - but a two strip version, or, a PMQ - Poor Man's Quad. I had seen Kaboom's latest quad Driggs up at Grayrock in late June and it cast very nicely. I thought, hey, I'll just give it a shot and see what happens.

What I discovered is that I might as well go ahead and make hex rods - about the only difference in the process is the amount of strips and planing work involved. And, the way I made this rod I had no planing form - all free hand planing. Wow... now THAT is a learning curve. And straightening these blanks is an exercise in patience. Or futility. Whichever...

But - the rod is done, it casts remarkably well - somewhere between a hex bamboo rod and a graphite rod, at least with a 5 wt line.

We will see what it can do in the Ausable this weekend... meanwhile, here's a quick video showing how it went:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLHK8v0y0jQ

Bob