The Itinerant Angler Podcast: Season Six

Episode Ten: Permit! with Lori-Ann Murphy

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Lori-Ann Murphy is a popular and well-known guide from Montana, who recently took over as fishing coordinator at El Pescador Lodge in Belize. Don't miss her comments on the way saltwater fly fishing has changed, and her exciting analysis of the most elusive fish in salt water: the permit. ]]> tag:www.itinerantangler.com,2011:/podcasts//3.160 2011-09-30T14:47:34Z 2012-01-01T01:04:56Z

If you missed it in the paper format, my article from the Summer 2011 issue of Fly Rod & Reel magazine, on the foreign fly tying industry, is now available online for free:

“DEAR SIRS,” the e-mail started, “My name is Reginald Kibugi, and I am seeking to sell you excellent-quality fishing flies.” My cursor hovered over the Spam button, but the next line made me hesitate: “My asking price is $3 per dozen.” That’s a quarter a fly. Was this a good deal? A bad deal? I didn’t know, and chances are, you’ve received similar e-mails, if not this very one, and you don’t know either.

In order to answer that question, you have to know a bit about the world of commercial fly-tying, and that means you need some history. Back in the 1970s, an American professional fly tier named Dennis Black was driving from shop to shop to peddle his wares. On one of his long road trips across the West, he had an epiphany: He might be better off supervising other tiers than doing all the work on his own.

Continue reading at Fly Rod & Reel's website...

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When the boat is deflated, look carefully for the zipper access to the internal bladder.  On the J.W. Outfitters boats, this zipper is hidden by a flap on the rear of the pontoon.

Extract the tubes from the casing and stretch them out carefully.  Best to do this in a clean area free of sand, gravel or debris which might scratch or otherwise damage your bladder.

Attach your pump and inflate the pontoons.  You are going to over-inflate them by about 20%; when inflated inside the cases, the bladders are not actually fully charged.  You want them to be tight but not so taut that they make pinging noises when you touch them or make a pump stroke.

Once inflated, fill your squirt bottle with water and a generous dollop of liquid dish soap, then liberally spray the entire bladder. 

Look closely.  You will see bubbles growing from pinhole leaks, and may even hear the air squealing as it leaks out.  Soap causes the squeals to increase in volume, making them easier to find. The key is to watch for bubbles that grow; not those that merely formed when you sprayed the boat. Sometimes they will leave a trail (like in the photo below), which is easy to follow.

When you spot a leak, wipe off the soap with your rag and circle the area in permanent marker. (Don't worry, this will be hidden when the bladders go back inside the cases).  Work slowly and cover the entire surface area of both pontoons. When you've found and circled all your problem areas, hose off the bladders so they do not remain soapy.

Deflate the bladders so that the leaks are no longer under tension. Then, pre-treat your circled areas by wiping the surface area with rubbing alcohol.

Finally, using your toluene glue, apply a generous, coin-sized (and coin-thickness) amount of glue over the pinhole leak.

Let the patch dry overnight or for a few hours, then tuck the bladders back into their cases by grabbing the inside of the tip of the case and holding it to the tip of the bladder while you stretch the case back to its full length. Lubricate with water if necessary. When you've tucked the bladders back in, take care to make sure both tips are filled by the bladder ends, then zip your cases up and re-inflate.  You're done!

IF THERE’S ONE THING FLY FISHERMEN GET worked up about, it’s fly rods. Golf addicts may expound for hours about a club head’s “sweet spot,” and ammunition reloaders go glassy-eyed talking about ballistics and shot patterns, but even these fanatics would be hard pressed to rival a shop full of anglers discussing “swing weight,” “modulus” and “action.” The funny thing is, most of these same experts have little idea how a graphite rod is made (and in the fly shop we’re all experts, at least when it comes to what we think a rod should be). The process is as fascinating as it is complicated. Knowing a thing or two about rod construction greatly increases your appreciation of what fly rods are… and yes, maybe what they should be.

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Fundamentally, a graphite fly rod starts out as a sheet of carbon fiber that is impregnated with various types of glues or resins, depending on the manufacturer and the rod model. These “prepreg” sheets come in huge, glistening rolls, like an extra-jumbo tube of gift wrap. In order to make raw carbon fiber sheets into the tube shape of a fly rod, you need something to form it around—a mandrel. Mandrels are where the design process of a fly rod really gets started.

Cutting carbon fiber into the "flag" which will be rolled into a blank. Courtesy Scott Fly Rods.

Once a manufacturer has a mandrel (typically after a lot of prototyping), it’s time to roll out the blank. A sheet of carbon fiber is pulled from the roll and hand-cut with a sophisticated knife “that kind of resembles a box-cutter,” according to Scott’s Crabtree. Once cut, these sheets are called “flags” or “patterns.” For U.S. manufacturers, they always take the form of a trapezoid of some kind, since the tip will always be somewhat narrower than the butt (this goes for every section of the rod). According to rod designer and casting guru Jason Borger, these trapezoids may still wind up being quite complex, with multiple compound angles to create different actions. (In contrast, some very budget-conscious overseas manufacturers simply cut a rectangular pattern and allow all corners to overlap in a twist when rolled. These rods are typically sold in bubble packs in big-box stores).

But wait! Here the manufacturers have to deal with a serious design problem. If you make a graphite rod out of nothing more than impregnated carbon fiber, which is almost always aligned to run lengthwise down the blank, then it will snap the first time you bend it. “Think of it like a drinking straw,” says Paul Johnson, formerly of Sage. “If you bend it, first it will ovalize, then it will crack out at the edges.” TFO’s Gary Loomis analogizes an unreinforced rod to an egg: “It’s very strong if you’re pushing from outside, but much weaker when the stress comes from inside. That’s how come a little chick can break out of its egg so easily.” To prevent this, rod makers use something called “scrim.” Scrim is a reinforcing material that is aligned perpendicularly to the carbon fiber of the rod. Once rolled, it gives the rod hoop strength that helps it resist ovalization. “In the old days,” says Johnson, “scrim was always fiberglass, but in recent years we’ve been able to use carbon fiber.” Some manufacturers use a chopped mat of “paper carbon” scrim, like particle board, while others use a unidirectional product that allows all the scrim fibers to be aligned into hoops. And, of course, many rods are still made with fiberglass scrim, to maximize strength and minimize cost.

Depending on how strong the manufacturer needs the rod section to be, the scrim flag might be cut wide, to cover all of the main carbon fiber flag, or narrower, giving less reinforcement. Once rolled, the scrim is sandwiched in between layers of carbon, meaning if you cut a cross-section you’d see scrim, then carbon, then more scrim, etc.

“It is very important that the first turn be perfect,” says Scott’s Crabtree, “so we do them by hand. If you have a void or gap at this early stage, the blank will twist and will have to be discarded.” Once the first turn is made, the rod is ready to be rolled into that “blank,” or tube. If you’ve ever made pasta, you can imagine roughly what the next step looks like. Manufacturers use expensive industrial rolling machinery resembling two giant pneumatic drums, with a small slot in between. With a worker carefully tending the machinery, the flag and mandrel are fed through the drums and tightly rolled into the familiar shape of a flyrod blank. Depending on the weight of the rod, the position on the blank and the materials used, the blank section may require dozens of turns, or as few as 10. The number of turns determines the thickness of the blank wall (which can affect a rod’s action significantly).

Once a blank is rolled, it must be tightly bound in a heat-resistant polypropylene tape, to hold it in its rolled form. This tape is wrapped around and around the rod in a spiral pattern, and ultimately gives “natural finish” rods their ridged shape, which I’ve heard compared to a snake belly. Once taped, the blank sections hang vertically in a giant walk-in oven to cure. All the resins are heated and harden, in a process akin to firing pottery. Interestingly, the tape wraps must stay in place during this process, both to hold the form and also “to keep all the resin from liquefying and dripping off the blank onto the floor,” according to Crabtree.

Final marking of the almost-finished rod. Courtesy Scott Fly Rods.

When the resin in all the blank sections is done curing, the blanks are ready to be turned into castable fly rods. First, the mandrels have to come out of the blank. “We use a pneumatic pull press and a specially-sized die that exactly fits the butt of each different blank section,” explains Johnson. Next, the tape is removed from the outside. For natural-finish rods, like Scott’s current G2 series or Orvis’ older Clearwater, the ridged blanks go straight through to production. Most rods, however, are sanded at this point. Orvis’ Rosenbauer explains that there’s no performance difference one way or another, but most customers now prefer “shiny rods,” so the manufacturers usually oblige. However, sanding is a delicate process that requires a lot of skill (take too much off and you’ll weaken the blank). Throughout, the blanks are also carefully inspected: Those with cosmetic blemishes are typically discarded, even if the blemish would not affect the performance of the rod, “because it isn’t worth the expense of the hardware componentry to build out an imperfect rod,” says Crabtree.

Many manufacturers paint the blanks after sanding, though different rod makers use a different order from this point on. Most use automotive-style paints, which require breathing apparatus and clean rooms. Other manufacturers use a UV-curing paint based on pine resin, which can be “set” by being bathed in powerful UV light, like some new knot glues (“Those lights will burn you,” says Crabtree). In addition to being painted, the rods get ferrules now. For the most common sleeve-over ferrules, this process involves installation of glue caps or moisture plugs in the male ends of the blank; if designers do their jobs, the fit should be tight right out of the oven. The few remaining companies using internal ferrules have a multi-step process requiring fitting, insertion and gluing of the male ferrule section, which must then be carefully sanded to fit the female side.

With ferrules in place and the blank sections painted, the rods are ready to be dipped in a permanent protective coating of epoxy. This uses a variable orifice die that Crabtree says is “kind of like a round squeegee” to push a smooth bead of epoxy all the way from one end of the blank to the other. The rods are then left to cure for several hours in a clean room, so no dust or blemish mars the finish.

With the grips in place, the rods are ready for guides. After carefully aligning the blank, the builder tapes the guides in place, then wraps thread to hold them on permanently. As the builder completes each wrap, they remove the tape holding the guide feet, until ultimately the guides are ready to be epoxied (the final, shiny coating). But first come decals. Some companies use stickers, while others continue to hire trained calligraphers (who must all have close to the same handwriting) to write on blanks. Any alignment dots (witness marks), decorative wraps, inlays or other “jewelry” would also be placed at this time.

All epoxy must be very carefully applied while the rods rotate to prevent unsightly bubbles and sags. If anything goes wrong here, the rod must be stripped and re-wrapped, or even discarded. When the epoxy has cured, the butt-end of the reel seat is affixed—the last piece of the hardware to go on—and the rod is ready for inspection.

Final inspection for many manufacturers is simply the last step in a long process of ongoing quality control. Throughout a rod’s construction, workers are trained to check for blank twist, unsightly blemishes, paint runs or misaligned guides. R.L. Winston’s Leslie Clark confirms that each worker who touches a rod “is empowered to discard any blemished rod they see.” With this many moving parts and this much hand labor, it’s easy to see how fly rods have come to cost as much as they do. Today’s rods are lighter, more responsive and less likely to break than ever before, all while being made with the same hand craftsmanship that is the hallmark of a quality fishing tool.

This article originally ran in the Spring 2011 issue of Fly Rod & Reel magazine. ]]> tag:www.itinerantangler.com,2011:/podcasts//3.153 2011-06-07T23:21:55Z 2011-06-20T00:24:28Z