This rod is kind of fun - the best tiger-striped flaming I've accomplished to date. it's an 8-foot, 5-weight, in 3 pieces, based on an apparently unusual Dickerson taper. Most Dickerson 3-piece tapers are slower than his 2-piece tapers... I'm not sure that will be true with this rod. Lawn casting it, it feels light and accurate. Fishing it on Verdigre, I liked it best with an SA DT5 - nice tight loops into the ever-present wind, flexing a little deeper than an 8013.
I put transparent yellow wraps tipped red on this rod - I wanted the tiger-stripes to show through the wraps- and I thought just the little bits of red would add contrast and interest. I put another of my hex bamboo reelseats on this personal rod - flamed, with blued hand-shaped hex hardware.
Here's another "Mystery rod":
Cross-cut Amazique spacer; wraps are emerald green tipped bright yellow then copper. This is turning into one of the nicest 3-piece tapers I've had a chance to cast.
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8615
Even though my rodmaking friend Alan K has for years used an 8615 for the majority of his fishing, I came late to the 8615 party. Dickerson's 8-and-a-half-foot 6wt rod is not quite as fast as his 8013 or 8014; it flexes a little deeper, and does more of the work for you. It's a bit more of a relaxed and relaxing rod, although it certainly has the smoothness and power you expect from a Dickerson-designed taper. The extra 6 inches are welcome when you're deep-nymphing, as Alan showed me to do on the Gray Reef in Wyoming. At the same time, it's got plenty of "feel" in the tip, when you decide to use the rod for late-season dry-fly work. As Dalton J put it (with just a little exaggeration)"You really don't need any other rod."
This one is hollow-built, tiger-striped, with a flamed hex bamboo reelseat, full wells grip, color-preserved antique gold tipped emerald green.
Here's a more classic look for an 8615:
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Perfectionist
This is a rare Perfectionist clone. It's based on the Perfectionist that Paul Young made for his wife, Martha Marie. The taper is different from every other Perfectionist I've ever seen. In addition, I swelled the butt of this rod, which gives it a reserve of power that many modern clones lack. it's a 7-foot-6 true 4wt, although I note that it readily accepts WF4, DT4 and WF5 lines. Many times the mark of a good rod is that it can shine with several lines. Note the flamed-bamboo hex-shaped reelseat. This is a hold-over rainbow from Verdigre creek - started life as a stocker, but has gone "native" - just look at those colors!
Two more recent Perfectionists:
Both came from the same flamed culm, twinned through final planing, but then one got hollowed and the other is solid, one used URAC and the other Resorcinol glue; One got a hex reelseat and the other a nice cross-cut spacer. The top rod has wraps marigold tipped bright yellow then royal purple, while the bottom rod is quite classic: black tipped antique gold then black. Both are very nice casting 4-weights, light in the hand, effortless tight loops, and great roll-casters as well.
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8013
The Dickerson 8013, as with the Driggs River, fits into my personal pantheon of magical rods. It's 8 feet long, 2-piece, for a 5-weight line. There are lighter eight-footers, and heavier, stronger 8-footers, but for me, few other rods find the balance of smoothness, power and "feel" that Lyle Dickerson designed into this rod. It's a wonderful tool. Cast long and the swelled butt gives it the backbone to do it; short, it has the delicate tip to give you a great presentation. With a 5-weight silk line, this taper sings.
One of the techniques I use to avoid self-deception regarding rods I make is to pay attention to what others, particularly good casters, say about the rod. The 8013 gets frequent rave reviews.
Rod 2007 above is an 8 foot hollow-built Dickerson 8013, for a 5 weight line. This is another tiger-striped rod, and it features a tiger-striped hex bamboo reelseat with blued nickel-silver hardware. Done right, the hex bamboo reelseats look like an extension of the rod itself, and I think that's pretty cool.
It's hard to beat the Dickerson 8013 as an all-around rod with great smoothness and power, and hollow-building it knocked about 15% off the standard finished weight. It casts like a dream.
Below here is a photo of me horsing (trying to horse, uh, just holding on to!) a big hen rainbow at Arrowhead Ranch with an 8013. Arrowhead Ranch has been sold and I'll never fish there again, but it was a glorious day, wherein the rod cast callibaetis emergers, damselfly nymphs, hoppers, disco midges, and big black woolly buggers with equal aplomb. What a great rod! By the way, look at the arc of that 8013: with a "hot" fish, the tip is almost parallel with the line, taking no strain; it's the powerful butt of the rod that is fighting the fish. That's the way you protect a good rod and avoid sets.
Here are a couple more 8013s:
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Leonard 39dh
This is a 7-1/2 foot Leonard 39dh, for a 4 weight line. I think the spalted ash reelseat is beautiful, and I like the unusual yellow-and-black jasper wraps on blond cane.
This rod has step-down ferrules that ever-so-slightly quickened the rod. It is still a VERY smooth-casting rod, but it feels like it has more power. The swelled butt keeps some mass down by your hand, which seems to add to that feeling of "the rod casting itself."
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Driggs River
The first 2 rods I made were Driggs River Specials, designed by Paul Young. I lucked out, picking a great taper for my first effort. One of my good friends uses one of these 2 rods, and I still get out the original, rod #1, and fish it both on streams and for bluegills. People call this taper "parabolic", but having cast some Young Paras, as well as several Pezon et Michel parabolics, I have to say that from my point of view, the Driggs is not a true parabolic. it's not as tip-heavy as they are, and it doesn't have that same "loopy", "wait for it, ... wait for it,... OK, now go forward" casting timing that the true paras have. Look at a graph of the Driggs taper compared to the Young Paras, and it's immediately apparent that they are different animals. It's still got great power, and it still roll-casts like a dream, but it's quicker and easier to handle than they are. By the way, I've seen 10 published versions of the Driggs, taper, so don't assume that the one I'm talking about is the same one you might be familiar with - there's a pretty wide variance. Mine is on the more progressive and less parabolic end of the spectrum.
This rod has an osage orange reelseat spacer that has aged to a light chestnut color. As you can see, it's a near-perfect match to the wraps, which are color-preserved antique gold, tipped maroon.
This shiney brown was caught in a small brushy stream on the Driggs above - just the kind of place this rod excels at!
Here's another Driggs, antique gold wraps tipped red, with bronze Snake brand guides and a nice amber-colored stripper.
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Big Driggs
The Big Driggs 7-foot 9-inch rod was an experiment, stretching the 7ft2 Driggs River, and bumping it up one line weight. I love the Driggs River (see above) but sometimes on bigger water, I felt that you just need a little more rod. This one came out maybe a little heavier than I was anticipating, but I noticed that the people who picked up the rod and cast it without having that pre-conceived notion in their heads thought it was a very nice rod: easy to get the timing down, and plenty of power to punch line out.
I'm including it here because of the tiger-striped cane and clear wraps tipped black. Together, they make for a striking look. On a rack of rods, that one will be picked up and looked at early on, just because of its looks. it's not as easy as it may look to get all the tiger-stripes lined up around the rod, as you flame, plane and glue splines, but the look is worth it, so I'll be trying it again sometime soon.
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Midge
Certain people seem to have a presence that is bigger than their actual stature. The Paul Young Midge is a rod like that. In the rod-making world, it's diminutive at 6ft3, but it casts a DT4 with real authority. It's a great small-stream rod, useful in both up-stream and down-stream situations. Some people who have yet to cast it consider it a "toy", but not many who have used it to cast hopper-dropper rigs between big clumps of grass in tight spring creeks would call it a "toy." It excels at work in tight quarters.
The midge above was flamed dark at the butt, fading to blond at the tips. Wraps are antique gold tipped red, so they are darker than the cane at the tips and lighter than the flamed cane at the butt. it's a neat look. This was one of my first rods to get fit with a hexagonal bamboo reelseat, bright nickel silver over flamed bamboo.
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I've been experimenting with an alternative geometry, invented in Switzerland, that they call EVO, and I call Tri-Hex. Rather than building a rod with 6 equilateral triangles, the Tri-Hex is composed of 3 large triangles with the apexes shaved off, and 3 small triangles. It makes for a rod that, in cross-section, looks like a big triangle with the corners cut off.
It's different enough that I have devoted a web page just to that design (Tri-hex Rods), but I thought I'd mention it here as well. So far, the geometry seems to make into rods that are lighter than their hex brethren, with more and smoother power, and a tendency to cast in a very linear manner.
The reelseat on this rod is burled redwood, very pretty, and
then I engraved the cap and ring with a hop-vine pattern.
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A few years ago I read about a guy who was turning down big left-over hex bamboo sections, to make round bamboo reelseats. That got me to wondering why a person couldn't make HEX reelseats. Well, shaping the nickel-silver into hex components is why, but I got a couple tools that made it possible, and this is the result. I've put them on a couple rods now, and they really complement a hex rod. This reelseat is on a personal rod, a 7ft9 3-pc rod based on the Dickerson 8013. It casts one heck of a 6DT line.
I haven't made a secret of how to make these reelseats, but to my knowledge, no one else has put the effort into building the tools necessary to make them, so for now, as best I know, if you see a rod with a hex bamboo reelseat, you will know it was made by Lee Koch.
