A close family friend and mentor of mine in his late 70’s introduced me to fly fishing last summer. He guided all around Montana when he was my age and he said his wife panted rods for Winston when they were living in Twin Bridges. He invited me to visit his family’s cabin for about a week, in Rhododendron Oregon, right on the zigzag river and still creek.
He taught me the basics and then took me and my father out to the Lower Deschutes with his brother to get my feet wet. We caught whitefish and redsides all day and it will forever be a cherished memory.
After we got back home to Arizona he gifted me this rod, I’m still super new to this and want to know what kind of rod this is if you guys know. I’m 23 years old and just starting out my fly fishing journey and plan on holding onto this rod as long as I live but I’d like to know more about it. He turns 80 this year and doesn’t remember much about when he got it.
I apologize if this is an ignorant question or something but I’m curious and as my friend gets older he’s remembering less and less and it mean a lot to me. Thanks in advance
Posted by Mayonnaise_Actual
3 Comments
Don’t know much about the rod but Eric Ramsey used to build bamboo rods for RL Winston in Montana. His custom graphite rods are really amazing but his bamboo stuff is legend.
Ramsey built some incredible bamboo that are highly (highly highly!) regarded. As the prior person posted he was legendary.
I would reach out to Winston and see if they can provide any info on it. At worst it’s an old copy that’ll fish. At best you might have a really cool rod w an incredible backstory.
Keep us posted!!!
It has that sweet painted on info that I love about Winston rods.
An 8′ 3 wt is an ideal rod for small stream dry fly fishing, which is honestly a really good way to start learning how to fly fish. You can get an inexpensive reel, load it up with something like a Cortland peach double taper line, grab a good smattering of dry flies, a 7.5′ 3x leader pack and 3-5x tippet spools and be good to go. It is some of the most fun you can have, and once your skills are developed more you can branch out into bigger water, heavy nymphs and streamers with higher line wt rods. But even then you will probably still want to spend a lot of time fishing small creeks with that awesome fly rod.
I will say that you should recognize that as an older custom rod, there is no way to fix a tip if you break it. I have never broken a fly rod, and it isn’t that hard to prevent. All you need to do is avoid car doors like the plague when setting up or taking down your fly rod. Also ceiling fans. But honestly, I have been fly fishing for over 15 years and I have never broken a fly rod.