Bamboo fly rod bonanza!

For those of you in or following the rod swap, you will recall that I mentioned meeting a fella that had claimed to have about 250 old production house bamboo fly rods. He offered to sell some to me, and I tried to get out there to meet him and see what he had. Well, I finally got around to doing that today. All I can say is :shock: . He wasn’t kiddin! More old fly rods than I have ever seen. Nothing super nice, just a bunch of old blue collar rods, a lot of mismatched/spare parts, but a lot of repairable rods as well. Even a few that need no repair at all. Would take forever to sort through them all and find out what he had (which would be a lot of fun). He sold me a 3/1 South Bend 359-8.5’ and a 3/1 9’ HI Governor, both full length sections in restorable condition, for $60. He also sold me a Ocean City 77 reel with some old silk line on it for $7.50 and a really neat four and a half foot fiberglass fly rod (yeah 4.5 feet long! I need to post some photos of that one) for $20. And there are a lot more where that came from. Not sure what exactly I am advocating here, don’t really have time to broker another great Boo Buy, but maybe someday. If so, it probably should be soon, the guy is 75 years old and not breathin too great.

Are you taking requests for specific bamboo rod tips, mids, butt sections & rod tubes that more than a few might need to fill out a " wish I could find one of these so this rod can be fished again " :?: 8)

If you do another BooBuy Extravaganza , I want in on the ground floor!!

I think I would be interested as well.

Geez that would take a lot of effort, not work since it would be a blast to do, but just sorting through all the rods, parts, pieces, rod tubes, etc would be quite an effort and quite an expense. At his age he would certainly be interested in selling the rods I would think. You would have to do some sort of a count, just to get a handle on the total number of rods. Let’s just assume for the sake of argument, that he is correct in his estimate of 250 rods (that may be high, but it cannot be THAT far off from what I saw, it was a boatload of rods). He certainly would be more than happy with $30/rod I would guess, but that is $7500! Even if you could get him down to $20/rod, that is still $5000. We would need a lot of people interested to make that fly, and I would need money, cause I can’t float that kind of cash!

But then again, it would make for great daytime fun to sort through all of them during the Fishin this year… :wink: If there is enough serious interest in it, I would be willing to approach him regarding purchasing his stock pile.

If it helps in terms of numbers Jim, count me in as a very interested participant!

Ed

Jim, Just an FYI, Photojoe is my fishn partner. I helped him sort and pack the rods for shipment. He told me if he ever wanted too do it again, just shoot him. It is a lot of stressful work, but if you go for it have some valium handy :lol:

Jim,

I would be in with one or two rods in the light weight end (4-5wt) if this helps to get the number closer. I know that it sound like a drop in the sea now… but who knows tomorrow :roll:

Martin

I would be interested in a few rods too!!! :smiley: