What a great idea for those grips that go bad and are proving difficult to remove - just sprinkle with Soy Sauce and leave it for the critters!
ok ok… I got it…
soooo…soy sauce is out…habanero salsa work?
Jim, I built a 7 1/2 foot, 4 piece, 5 weight once and I wanted to keep the grip pristine, but I ended up doing nothing to it. Now it has a patina that I wouldn’t trade for the world. I really like that rod and the grip shows it. It’s kind of like I wiped a whole bunch of memories all over the grip.
joe
Thanks for the msg. What a beautiful way with words. Precious statement.
Thing is I have a ton of rods. Been searching for the holy grail of fly rods. I fished with a fly rod when I was 12…all alone. No one in Dogpatch, Illinois fished that way. It was cane poles or casting rods from a boat. I had no boat, no tackle box full of plugs.
I therefore fished with that 6’ fiberglass fly rod I bought for myself ($6.75 gathering dust in the hardware store) all summer on lakes. No books, no friends…just little ole toothless Norman Rockwell typical freckeled faced kid with a pole. I get very good with that rod because it was all I fished with.
50 years later I get back to fishing and they have these strange things called graphite that are 9’ long. I am not liking the too much. My wife passes and I go sit on a lake for 6 months. In so doing I bought a lot of rods off fail. Not realizing it was probably a way of coping.
Never finding the feel I wanted in a rod. Low and behold this past week I discovered the secret. It is not a particular rod that I need. It is matching the correct line to a rod. I have heard of overlining…but didn’t have all my reels lined up with lines. And I can’t lawn practice at my home. So I just never had a mix of rods and reels on a lake to experiment.
Wallah this past two weeks. Been camping and had a custom 9’ Lamiglass 3/4wt never fished. Put a 4wt line on it and not too happy. Had a five wt handy and put it on. BINGO…it cast perfectly. So now I have a lot of trial and error to match LINES to rods to see if I can like them…and sell the ones I do not care for. All this time it was not a matter of finding the right ROD. It was finding a LINE to go on a rod to make it cast like “I” want to cast.
Geeze it took a long time to discover this. Anyway…I have rods I want to test and then maybe sell. I love your message about leaving the grip alone. Someday it will look like a worn in pipe, or my coffee cup…it will be MY rod with all MY memories saved on the grip.
I shall just protect the grips with something temporary as I play with them, so as not to soil them. Then I will be able to sell a few that still look new.
BTW it was the beautiful switch rod grips that got me wanting to protect the grips on it…and then naturally the thought to protect all the grips on my rods. I haven’t fished the switch rod yet…cause I wanted to cover the grip with something.
Thanks for the message Joe. Beautiful message.
Seriously & Sincerely,
Jim,
I wasn’t entirely truthful about doing nothing to the grip. When I caught my first fish on the Lochsa River, I Christened it with a splash of whiskey on the cork & reel seat. Check out the patina.
Here’s where I was when the rod got Christened.
bobbyg,
Thanks for the reply and the photo. That Stephen Kiley creation is indeed very very nice! I’d love to get my hands on some of that wood for my wooden trout nets!!
gemrod,
I would have a tendency to go with a worcestershire sauce or perhaps a KC Masterpiece (mesquite) sauce as opposed to the afore mentioned soy sauce. Just sayin!!!LOL.
Regards, Dave S. (fishdog54)