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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 15:02 • #26 
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Joined: 02/09/16
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Location: Colorado
whrlpool wrote:
Excellent. Ritz had a bit of commercial interest in tackle. Like the Judge, he could toss off a theorem to suit any occasion according to who might be listening/reading and what was being advertised. Personally, because of the cigars and the jeep, I give the edge to the Judge. My Joys of Trout is in the attic, I don't recall and wouldn't have paid much attention, but it would be fun to know what pronouncements Arnold Gingrich made on the subject of fiberglass, if any. If his buddy Ritz spoke up, I think Arnold would have weighed in for sure. It could have made good high-brow/low-brow chatter for Esquire.


That would have made for a great Esquire piece! I'll peruse The Joys of Trout and The Well Tempered Angler to see if Mr. Gingrich had an opinion on fiberglass. Apart from his veneration of Paul Young bamboo rods, I don't recall if he wrote about any other material.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 16:35 • #27 
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Posts: 457
GRASSNGLASS wrote:
Gierach I truly enjoyed in the beginning, but almost seems like he ran out of good stuff about a dozen years ago. He lost me two books ago when he wrote about the joys of Tenkara. Sounded like an advertisement placed in the middle of the book. I'll still buy every book he writes just in case there's a hidden gem.y


I thought "Trout Bum" was an absolute delight. The next three or four were good, but I lost interest after that. I haven't bought one of his in a while.

I didn't know he wrote about the "joys" of Tenkara. I'm very surprised.

Tight lines,
Bob


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 17:41 • #28 
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Location: Colorado
I like Gierach, generally. Fishing Bamboo is another of his good ones. So is Good Flies.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 18:51 • #29 
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Joined: 06/11/06
Posts: 2516
Location: Nature Coast Florida
I enjoyed Gierach when he talked bamboo. Camping out and living on Dinty Moore Stew. Talking about streamside coffee. Endless road trips.

His old fishing buddies like A.K. Best and a few others have been missing for what appears like new buddies that I truly don't find as interesting.

Don't care about chasing steelhead with a graphite spey rod, other authors if you want that kind of stuff.

Not that what he's doing is bad, I just enjoyed the earlier works much more.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 18:54 • #30 
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Joined: 08/14/06
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Location: Panther City, Texas
I've never delved very deeply into fly fishing literature other than Hemingway's Nick Adams stories and Middleton's "The Earth is Enough". I think most of the reasons I've had a near lifelong love of fly fishing can be found within these books.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 19:06 • #31 
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Joined: 04/12/18
Posts: 457
frogmorton wrote:
I've never delved very deeply into fly fishing literature other than Hemingway's Nick Adams stories and Middleton's "The Earth is Enough". I think most of the reasons I've had a near lifelong love of fly fishing can be found within these books.


There is nothing in the world that makes me want to drop everything and go on a backpack fishing trip than "Big Two-Hearted River." A simple narrative that hits me right in the heart every time I read it.

Tight lines,
Bob


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 19:48 • #32 
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Joined: 06/11/06
Posts: 2516
Location: Nature Coast Florida
I thought great, except don't know about those onion sandwiches.

Barry


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 23 Apr 2018, 23:37 • #33 
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Joined: 04/12/18
Posts: 457
GRASSNGLASS wrote:
I thought great, except don't know about those onion sandwiches.

Barry


Back then, the bread had enough backbone to make that kind of thing a real taste treat... ;)

The question is, did Hemingway use glass?

Tight lines,
Bob


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 24 Apr 2018, 06:42 • #34 
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Joined: 04/20/07
Posts: 8920
Location: US-ME
Well not in the post WW1 "Big Two-hearted River," anyhow. Gotta figure later on in big-game saltwater fishing.

Oh my gosh I haven't been through Seney, Michigan, in a long time, now. Desmobob, if you can stand going straight on flat roads for hours on end on your motorcycle, head up the Northway into Canada, hang a left toward Ottawa, cruise out through the Sudbury moonscape, keep heading on through Slt St. Marie and west on Michigan 28, ideally in the endless twilight of a northern Michigan summer evening. As you cruise into Seney, you will see the RR tracks paralleling the road, and the old main road following them more closely. Bear left and take that to the RR bridge. I think it still has the two big hearts, but it is called the Fox River. That is where Nick got off the train to find reassurance, in spite of the burnt-over land, that "the river was there."

I don't know how much RR traffic goes through there any more. There was enough in the 1980s that I would leave a penny on the rails when I passed through . Once a train came right while I was there so I got a nice flattened shiney one to keep as a talisman.

I figure the others I left on the rails got reshaped, too, but I don't recall finding one on the next trip. Maybe one is still there. The river is.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 24 Apr 2018, 08:05 • #35 
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Gingrich was a huge fan of Russ Peak rods and called him "The Stratovarius of fiberglass". High praise!


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 24 Apr 2018, 15:11 • #36 
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Joined: 06/28/16
Posts: 930
Location: Northern WI
I like Gierach, but I have only a minute sample size. I read and enjoyed Trout Bum and am currently reading and enjoying very much Even Brook Trout Get The Blues.

As for the inaugural post in this thread, I like bamboo the same as Mr. Traver did. I just don't fish it anymore because I'm too worried about breaking the darn thing during a headwater bushwhacking expedition or when fishing from my inflatable raft. I'm just too hard on my gear.

I will say that of all the materials rods are made with, I do find bamboo to be the most pleasant. Maybe I'll have to dive back in after all. ;D


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 24 Apr 2018, 17:37 • #37 
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Joined: 03/20/18
Posts: 62
Location: Kansas
desmobob wrote:

I didn't know he wrote about the "joys" of Tenkara.

I didn't know there were any.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 25 Apr 2018, 16:16 • #38 
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Joined: 02/09/16
Posts: 746
Location: Colorado
pmagas wrote:
Gingrich was a huge fan of Russ Peak rods and called him "The Stratovarius of fiberglass". High praise!

Thanks pmagas to you and whrlpool for pointing me in the right direction! In The Joys of Trout, Gingrich writes the following about glass and Russ Peak,

Glass was still a dirty word to me, something I associated with bait fishing and spinning rods, when I wrote the 'The Well-Tempered Angler'... Then I met Russ Peak in Jackson Hole, at the first FFF conclave... Russ put me into the river...handing me one of his two-piece six-and-a-half-foot Zenith rods... While we fished Russ took me on a verbal tour of the more than two hundred hand operations that go into the making of his rods after the initial selection of the blanks at the Conolon factory.... I was astonished that split cane could be out customized by glass.

...I had thought the day would never come when I'd hear myself asking for a glass rod, but after a day with it on the Firehole, I knew I couldn't live without a Zenith.

The big difference between a Russ Peak rod and one of comparable workmanship in split cane is that it can be used harder, over a longer period, with an extra margin of performance that only glass affords, and without any sign of that fatigue that even treated cane is heir to in time...

I use a Russ Peak rod whenever I have occasion to need about 10 percent longer casts than I can get, with the same expenditure of propulsive energy, out of bamboo. Conversely, I use bamboo where I want about 10 percent more tip delicacy than even Russ Peak can wheedle out of glass. With these compensating differences, I regard his glass rods, and the best makers' bamboos, as fully equal examples of the rod maker's craft.

Arnold Gingrich, The Joys of Trout, 1973 edition, pp 166-170


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 25 Apr 2018, 16:20 • #39 
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Joined: 02/12/16
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Location: USA-CO
I love the writing. It's clear, fluid and compact.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 25 Apr 2018, 20:42 • #40 
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Joined: 03/20/18
Posts: 62
Location: Kansas
Thanks to al who posted quotes from Traver's writings. I may pick up some of his books. He doesn't come across as a blowhard as some of the current authors do.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 26 Apr 2018, 05:48 • #41 
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Joined: 09/29/09
Posts: 906
Location: US-MI
Testament of a Fisherman by Robert Traver is worth reading at the start of each fishing season. This classic also serves as a wonderful reply to any who question why we fly fish. It starts with:

Quote:
"I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful …"


Many great fly fishing authors noted and some quality quotes also posted above.

Had the pleasure of handling Mr. Voelker's fiberglass fly rod at one point. Brown glass, Fisher origin I believe. The rod was in wonderful condition, hardly fished as he preferred bamboo rods by all accounts.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 26 Apr 2018, 06:39 • #42 
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Joined: 04/20/07
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Fantastic. Saved me breathing a lot of dust in the attic. I think/hope this discussion of authors, on 'glass if they mentioned it, is in the spirit of the original post about Volker. You know, another great one is Roderick Haig-Brown, A River Never Sleeps. I have that someplace, too. Nick Lyons had an edition sometime, but mine is older than that. It was originally published in the 1940s. I don't recall anything about tackle, except about rigging prawn--but one of you guys more ambitious than I am might take a peak--and you would enjoy it anyhow. Just the date doesn't make it promising on fiberglass--maybe he wrote about that later on--but on the art of angling, I'll just say that fiberglass suits the art even if not in Haig-Brown's prime era. Let me see; it could be under the box with the first few years of Gray's Sporting Journal. But that means moving the first few years of Catskill Magazine, and probably the '70s Fly Fisherman is in the way. I already looked four or five times up there just to be sure 1968 Herter's catalog was lost for good--it was and has been since the '80s, I'm not going there.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 26 Apr 2018, 15:13 • #43 
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Joined: 08/19/16
Posts: 314
Location: Brazil
For what it’s worth and to anyone who may be interested, here is a link to a YouTube video with the venerable Judge in action. Now, to hold my tongue just right and cross the fingers while pasting the link… If that doesn't work, perhaps you can copy and paste it in your browser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-HLrrbe27Y


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 27 Apr 2018, 13:12 • #44 
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Joined: 11/08/05
Posts: 113
Location: BZN
pmag wrote:
A lot of the politics are for the salvation of your streams and your access to them. As Tom McGuane said, "When the trout go, smash the state".


WORD!


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 30 Apr 2018, 12:15 • #45 
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Joined: 03/05/14
Posts: 187
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I grew up reading all those guys and enjoyed nearly all of it. Two thumbs up for Sparse, Lyons, Zern, Traver. I've read every Gierach book but he can become a bit annoying (but never as annoying as Schwiebert, who I find intolerable - - "There I was, after catching five, 40 pound salmon on one of my gem-like size 14 Orange Charms, sitting on the balcony of my suite in the Hotel Eau de Rouge, sipping a 60-year-old brandy and eating exquisite Beluga caviar with my good friend, Charles Ritz . . . .").

Read some (or all) Roderick Haig-Brown. Strangely mesmerizing mixtures of amateur fishery biology and deep love of the game and all that surrounds the game. And you get, as a bonus, no name dropping.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 01 May 2018, 11:44 • #46 
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Joined: 12/14/12
Posts: 25
Location: US-MO
I have really enjoyed this thread. I enjoy good fishing books, and have read most mentioned. Most of the old writers did not focus on gear, and their writing was of a different time and pleasures. I agree I can't seem to enjoy Schwiebert, don't think he would be the kind of guy I would enjoy a day of fishing with. I will second the fishing stories of Gordon Macquarie, if you have not read him give him a try.
As for Travers statement on bamboo and fiberglass, it is hard to ignore the charm of a nice light bamboo fly rod. The glass rods available at the time of his statement were much different than those that came along later, and certainly those made today.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 01 May 2018, 20:54 • #47 
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Joined: 06/28/16
Posts: 930
Location: Northern WI
Alistair wrote:
pmag wrote:
A lot of the politics are for the salvation of your streams and your access to them. As Tom McGuane said, "When the trout go, smash the state".


WORD!

Double WORD.


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 05 Jun 2018, 08:22 • #48 
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Joined: 01/04/16
Posts: 9
Location: US-NY
Hello
"long time listener, first time caller", I think.
I love this thread so I thought this would be a good time to send my first post.
I have really never read Traver but have extensively read and thoroughly enjoyed Gierach. And still do.
I also think McGuane is brilliant. But my all time favorite (ready for it?) is Schwiebert. I know all the pretentious crap is off putting for many people but for me his writing is so descriptive of what can only be called a "Golden Age" of fly fishing. For me it is great arm chair angling. Seriously, all the blue collar BS aside, how many of us would not have jumped at a chance to fish some of the famous salmon rivers he fished, even today? The Gaula, the Laxa, the Aroy. or how about some of the chalkstreams of England or even the Beaverkill when it was in it's prime. I don't long for the past but I enjoy reading about it.

Emel


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 14 Jun 2018, 14:19 • #49 
Glass Fanatic
Joined: 07/11/14
Posts: 1784
Location: urban Colorado
HedleyLamarr wrote:
desmobob wrote:

I didn't know he wrote about the "joys" of Tenkara.

I didn't know there were any.


liked Gierach's conclusion, which was roughly,
"in the pursuit of simplicity I seem to have bought another rod"
we've all been there..


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Re: Traver on Glass
Post 17 Jun 2018, 20:58 • #50 
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Joined: 06/28/16
Posts: 930
Location: Northern WI
I especially like this Gierach quote, as it aptly describes my general outlook on life these days...

"I necessarily fear change except that it's so seldom for the better. It's just that I can live with any number of things going straight to hell as long as these streams continue to hold up. If this amounts to living in a fool's paradise, don't waste your time trying to explain that to the fool."


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