Bluegill Fly Rodders

Comment

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on July 26, 2013 at 9:33am

Those reels were solidly built, all metal pieces. The nose cone was
spun aluminum as you suggest. It also served as the drag; it was threaded with a fine thread and you turned it to put more tension
on the spool.
They were hand assembled and somewhat fiddly, which I'm sure
led to their ultimate demise. All things considered, however, they were certainly functional.

Comment by Ray Ditzenberger on July 26, 2013 at 8:07am

I am almost positive it was a Shakespeare. It had a fairly long nose cone and it had the appearance of spun aluminum. I was conversing with this fella in the area of the late 60's into the mid 70's. He was not a well man when I first met him. He was on disability. His name was Evert Ross. He tied flies but was mostly into rod building at the time.  He used mostly Fenwick blanks but he also use some Herter's blanks and another Mfg. that escapes me right now. This other company still makes blanks.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on July 25, 2013 at 5:55pm

I have one of those reels, Ray, in my collection.

Mine is a South Bend "Spin 22," and I estimate the vintage to be early 60's.

But I'm pretty sure the two companies were connected at some point in the past. I have other reels that are identical from both makers, leading me to think the designs were shared. This wouldn't be anything new; it's been done before and since.

Comment by Ray Ditzenberger on July 25, 2013 at 8:37am

An old feller that I used to visit about once a week was also a rod builder. He fished a 9' glass flyrod that was built as a flyrod. He had a Shakespeare spincast reel that mounted under the rod and close to the reel seat. The reel did not have a button on the back of the reel to release the line. As I recall the line was released by back cranking the winding handle. He liked to fish cut bait and soft craws in the river by just letting the bait dead drift down the riffles. He caught SMB, catfish, and carp. He caught some big ones too.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on July 24, 2013 at 12:51pm

Dick.
They actually have them with multiple lenses. Not enough magnification with one lens? Bring another into play!

I just sucked it up, admitting my eyes were about shot for really
fine work. Then I got progressive bifocal glasses and added Polarized clip ons.

There are several ways to go. When I checked on Ebay for "clip on magnifiers," there were several designs to choose from. Hat brim types started at $11.

Comment by dick tabbert on July 24, 2013 at 12:37pm

David I need that magnifier I wonder if 2 is better.

Comment by Walt Foreman on July 24, 2013 at 9:40am

Ken, the best solution if you're wanting to fish live bait from a fly rod with a spinning reel, is simply to have a spinning rod custom-built on a fly rod blank.  I make such rods myself, and they're my specialty, but there are also plenty of other custom builders who could build one for you.  For a spinning reel, you need spinning guides to get good casting distance, not to mention proper placement of the reel.  Let me know if I can help.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on July 24, 2013 at 8:54am

Well known among stream wading fly men are clip on magnifiers.
These clip to the brim of cap or hat, and fold down for use.
When you're done with the fine work, you flip them up and out of the way.
Also available are sunglasses which have these retracting magnifying
lenses built in.
The clip on type are 15-25$, while the others are $75-100.
The more expensive ones combine high quality, Polarized glasses
with equally fine ground lens optics.
I have not tried either type, but from the sound of it we could all use a pair.

Comment by David, aka, "McScruff" on July 24, 2013 at 8:45am

Ken, something you may want to try is a spin fly combo rod.
Really just a fly rod blank mated to a spinning reel seat,
they are a "best of both worlds" proposition. Too often, compromises
don't work so well.... but this isn't one of those cases.

I have two 7' spin fly rods, an Olympic and a Wright & MCGill/Eagle Claw.
They make excellent casting rods for light bluegill tackle, and
I match mine to light spinning or trigger spin reels.
They are also not too shabby as fly rods with a heavy enough line.
My Olympic has a rear section on the handle that dismounts, placing the fly reel in the traditional position. The W-M/Eagle Claw doesn't, but you can mount the reel at the rear with tape or zip-ties.

Bonus: I got mine for around 10-12$ on Ebay. New ones are more than double that.

Comment by Leo Nguyen on July 24, 2013 at 8:28am

Ken, don't worry. You're in the same boat as the most of us. My eyes are degrading little by little, and I'll be there soon enough where the Coke bottle lens won't help me to thread the lines any more. I'll probably will be feeling the lines like a blind person on braille, then stumble around the water, acting like a fish bait donut filling in the float tube, mistaking a shark for a very large striper. I only use hybridization when fly reel usage is restricted..really restricted, or, for trolling. Trolling around my water with the fly line will yield you a nice fast moving watercraft that will break your rod and holder, or an unknown monster that will strip your line faster than you can cay, "Ooooh @#$#@&*(&!!"

Nail knot is excellent not only for fly line to leader/backing, but also great on mono-flouro leader. I try to combine nail knot and Snell knot for my rigs now, beside a combo of perfection, trilene, blood, and several easy knots as a back up to teach my kids. Don't want to teach my wife too many insidious knots since she can "accidental" hang me out of frustration.

LOTFR, love those quills. I'm experimenting on the quill vs Thill extreme sensitive versions to see the similarity, which I got a batch that costed as much as per/quill. So far, so good. Slightly larger in diameter, handle just a bit more weight for the larger crawler pieces, and consistent in buoyancy from float to float, rather than testing each floatation capacity like the quills. Yet, quills are still my fall back float. Taught my family to grab dried reeds as make-shift float as well. They cracked up, but landed fishes before I did *sigh*

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