Hm, according to the guy I got it from it's from -78. He gave me this link, but I haven't verified it myself.

http://www.shakespeare-fishing.com/antiques/rods.pdf

The rod is very light for being a 6wt. It has a deep action with very fast recovery. The butt section is thin, and the cork grip is extremely thin. This gives the rod a very unique character. I can't wait to get it out in the park tomorrow. The slide rings is Orvis type, very minimalistic. The guides are black and the stripper is in white plastic. Butt over tip ferrule, spiral bands on smake guides. Cork quality not so good.

Anyway, it's a charming rod!

In 1976 I was living in South Florida, and one day I was killing time in Ft Myers at a fly shop, saw a set of rods that were the "new material" - graphite. At that time I was doing a lot of SW fishing and there was a lot of discussion if they would stand up to hard fishing for tarpon, reds, and the rare (at that time) snook. The idea was that the rods were fragile.

Well I wanted to try one out, bought one, an 8.5' rod, 8 wgt rod, that had not only the model number, but this one had the number "003" inked on the rod butt. I was later told that the rod was the third rod in the series.

The rod was different from the fiberglass rods at the time, and as I was using rods of 9-12 weights fishing in mangroves were fishing was more like hand to hand fighting, I only used the rod for the odd times when flats fishing and fishing for seatrout, along with bass fishing. I really felt it was over rated, and needed something like a 6 wgt rod.

I loaned the rod to a friend some 20-25 years ago and we lost trak of each other, I hope he's gotten good use of the rod.

As far as I remember, it looked pretty much like the above pic, but with a good sized cigar grip, and a full length aluminum locking reel seat. As stated above it was tip over butt, The windings were white over the black rod shaft. The stripper was a chrome frame early Fuji (I guess) and it had a ring and stirrup hook keeper. Oh yeah, like Shakespeares of the era, it had the famous spiral wrap bands.