Grandpa's Treasures

I never knew my Grandpa Bert. Well, Not really my grandfather, he's my Step mother's father. Besides the point, I didn't know that he was a fly fisherman. Reason being that he died of lung cancer about three years before my father met my step mother.

This past weekend I went back up to Las Vegas where my entire family seems to have migrated to En Masse, to be there for a baptism and stayed with my step mother. Talking abut fishing, she directed me to my step mother who had inherited the fly poles- GRandma thought my son and I were the best in my generation to carry that legacy of her husband, I guess. So out of the closet my mother pulls out all their extra gear and loads it off on me, keeping only one pole for herself.

I've just inherited a Macy's 8' bamboo Cyclone ( it was my grandmother's) a Herter's 8' fiberglass ( Made extra special because my grandfather replaced the guides, handle and reel seat himself by hand) and then just because my dad wanted my son to have it... A shakespeare 'Ugly Stik' 8' fly rod with a very old Pflueger medalist reel.

Only problem I have is that they used packing tape to bind them together and the bamboo rod is pretty much ruined ( the centerpiece is broken, missing four or five inches and it's lower ferrule) and I could be imagining it, but the rest seem slightly warped...

On a side note, grandma is upset because if she had known i'd be so into all this stuff she'd ahve kept all my grandpa's fly tying and rod building gear. Sh'yeh, if you had told me at age nine I'd be looking at thirty through the guides of a rod I made myself, casting flies i tied, on a river in central arizona, I'd have laughed until my sides bled.

now I am just trying to figure out this fiberglass pole... It's logo is different than any I've seen so far on the internet. Going to take it to a shop and find a reel that will suit it. No clue what weight it is, or anything... The adventure of digging into the past, eh?

:lol:

You could take the bamboo to a rod builder to repair it.
Enjoy, this must be fun :)

Thorarinn.

I have a 1977 Herter's catolog. If the rod has a model number I'll look it up.
Herter's glass rods were fairly low end all costing less than $20
They did sell a 6' 5wt, but all the others were either a 6 or 7wt

I can guarantee that it's from the mid to late fifties or very yearly sixties at the latest; That it's either a 4wt or a 5wt, more likely a 4wt. It doesn't have a model number and the big kicker for me at least, os that although the wrapping is the original green color that was used by Herter's back then, the guides aren't original, nor is the grip. My grandfather did those.

the bamboo rod is pretty much scrapped. It'd be a trip to redo the entire middle piece, plus I think that the tip is bent- my mother just wrapped the pieces together with packing tape for the last 20 years. I think the glass rod is saved, the bamboo might be unrecoverable, though I will talk to a few people at the caster's club I'm joining to see if anyone there might have a better diagnosis.

i pretty much experienced the same thing cleaning out my grandfathers stuff. I ended up with a mint 8' herters 6wt with mint reel and 1954 era line still in the box. plus a few bait caster and a South Bend 359.

anyway, PM me about the bamboo rod. I've salvaged worse rods and I'm up for a new challenge.