My first fly rod build was on a Fenwick brown blank purchased from Atlas Sporting Goods in Washington, DC sometime in 1970. The rod shop was incredible, racks and racks of blanks and bins full of cork rings, grips, guides, reel seats, ferrules and thread. If I remember correctly it was a 1pc blank, and the gentleman who ran the shop helped me cut the blank and sized the ferrules. I finished the rod with a grip made with cork rings, snake guides and Fenwick brown wraps. I fished it hard but it was soon relegated to the back of the rack as I built other rods and added them to my collection.

Forward 20 years or so, my house was across the street from a small tributary to the Potomac River and full of bass and bluegill and I spent a lot of evenings harassing them. One of my neighbors did a lot of offshore fishing but his teenage son Joey showed an interest in fly fishing and started tagging along with me. I "loaned" him the old Fenwick along with a Martin tuna can reel and fly line. Looks like I had a new fishin' buddy. We fished a lot together and he got a lot of use out of that rod.

Forward 27 years and my young fishing buddy had a family and a home of his own and he called me up to see if I was interested in doing a float trip for smallmouth bass one of our favorite stretches of the Potomac River. No need to twist my arm. Joey pulled into my driveway and handed me a beat up looking rod that, after a minutes inspection, turned out to be the "loaner" Fenwick. It was missing a few guides and was pretty scuffed up, but nothing that couldn't be fixed and he wondered if I would put it back together.

Later that evening I had a chance to take a closer look at it and it's marked Grizzly/ Fenwick FL842. Well, I've been looking for an FF 70 or FF 705 and if my research is right this is the same thing. Joey, I hate to tell you, but you're not getting this rod back. He's probably going to get a 7' 5wt CGR when they go on sale again.