Schroedinger

My son moved to Spain last year, and asked whether I could make him a spinning rod for targeting sea bass from shore (rock fishing) on the Costa Blanca coast line. Better yet, make two, so that we can go bass fishing together. So I did, using the medium heavy spinning/casting rod taper from Richard Walker’s Rod Building for Amateurs as a starting point, with a slightly tweaked tip end, and making them as 3 piece rods, with integrated Tapered Bamboo Ferrules, for easy transport.

I generally distribute Reigerkuitenvet as ‘half dome’ pucks in plastic ziplock baggies. For on-stream use I use small craft-shop screw-lid containers. However either way is less than ideal for actual use - I wanted something that gives instant access to a puck on the water without having to fumble with a baggie, to break off a piece to treat a leader, or to take the whole puck out of a container. Something that, after opening, gives full access to the puck so that I can hold the opened container and draw my leader straight through the line dressing. So I came up with the following design, easily turned on the lathe, from whatever wood, preferably nicely figured wood, you have lying around - as long as it will yield at least a 45 mm diameter spindle.

I got a request for an ultralight spinning rod, and as far as I’m concerned, the best ultralight bamboo spinning rods in history were designed, made and marketed by French giant (at the time) Pezon&Michel. Notably the Telebolic BB1, BB2 and BB3 models. The BB3 is a 10 g spinning rod, the BB2 a 6 g rod, and the BB1 a 4 g rod. They also had a BB0 3 g rod and the UltraLeger. The UltraLeger is not really a spinning rod - it is more suited to float fishing at a distance. The BB0 is likewise too soft and wimpy to be used for lure fishing. Moreover, the BB series of Telebolic rods are of a staggered ferrule design, which made some sense when making ultralight rods with metal ferrules, but not so much when you employ integrated bamboo ferrules or other non-metal ferrule types. The request was for something a little lighter than the BB1 - essentially a 3 g rod. As such I sat down to design a 3 g 2 piece bamboo spinning rod based on the BB1, but scaled down (as already laid out by Richard Wa...

Some time ago, a fellow rod builder asked whether I could make him a 4-string binder like the one I currently use, and take with me to meets and demos. I said, sure, why not, so I started assembling and making parts, considering what upgrades I could incorporate – better motor mount, better balanced drive wheels, larger foot plate, smaller thread spools with no protruding wing nuts, thread tensioners that attach to the binder wheels in a less jury-rigged manner, and thread guides made from steel rod rather than sections of cheap fiberglass coarse fishing rods. Oh, and real flanges with grub screws to fix the rear upper drive wheel and the front binder wheel to the main axle, rather than epoxying them in place… So I set about doing all that, and am now nearing completion, only waiting for a new sewing machine motor and drive belt, and a set of sewing machine thread tensioners, to be delivered before I can finalize the build. Here are some intermediate build pics. Drive wheels provisiona...

At my age, threading a fly onto a tippet in low light conditions, without magnification, is an exercise in frustration. A few high end gadgets are on the market to help with that - magnetic fly threaders - but they are prohibitively expensive, and the concept behind them is simple enough that I reckoned I could make one myself. They are nothing more than a solid base with a groove, a tiny dimple in that groove at one end, to position the eye of the hook, and a small rare earth magnet embedded in the base, just below that dimple, to (sort of) keep the fly attached to the tool, and positioned so that the hole in the eye is aligned with the groove. Once attached, you use the groove to guide the end of your tippet towards, and hopefully right through the eye of the hook - if the eye is free of crowding materials or varnish, this should work relatively painlessly. Most available fly threaders are made either from aluminium or high density resin (some are even 3D-printed) but since I don’t h...

I made this tiny tool for attaching yarn strike indicators to your leader with the help of a short section of silicone tubing - think ‘New Zealand Yarn Indicator’… It’s nothing more than a large darning needle with one side of the eye cut off, and stuck onto a shortish handle. You use the hook thus formed to draw the leader as a loop through the silicone tubing. Once the loop coming out of the end to the tube is large enough, you stick a piece of yarn into it, and draw the loop back into the tube, doubling the yarn into an indicator ‘ball’, and locking it into place. The fit is such that you can easily relocate the indicator as needed, or remove it altogether.