For most of the 40 years I have fished for Atlantic salmon in both Nova Scotia and the Gaspe I have been tinkering with bamboo salmon rods. As the years passed I found that I was favoring shorter and shorter rods, especially on many of the small to medium-sized salmon rivers that I often fished. They had many advantages: they were much less tiring than longer rods; had faster cycle time for more accuracy and less wind interference; possessed fewer guides and therefore better shootability; were easier to transport; were easier to draw fish close in when landing them; and, above all, were a whole lot more fun to play fish on. In all, they seemed to offer about as enjoyable a way to fish for salmon as one could ask for.

The stand-out model for me was the 6'9" utilizing a 7 sink tip or an 8 floating line. I fished the first model for 12 years, landing something like 60 salmon on that rod. I had worn out the guides and was thinking of retiring the rod when it was borrowed to cast in the Hardy Cup competition. Even with worn out guides the rod placed third and narrowly missed second. The replacement rod was a Spinoza model in the same length and line weight. It was interesting to compare the different node and temper systems to the first model. I made one rod for myself, one for my son, and an extra rod, this one here.

The details: this rod has Payne-style nodes and temper system. The ferrules are pot belly style and oxidized with brown wraps and yellow edges. Perfect spar varnish finish. Half wells grip. My own shop-made black anodized uplocking screw lock seat. Mortised Koa spacer. The bottom of the seat can be pulled out and a fighting butt seated. Cork and brass ferrule plugs are treated with paraffin to re-lubricate ferrule slides. The polished aluminum rod tube is complimented by my shop-made brass top and bottom. The bottom screws off to reveal a storage space for the fighting butt.

Note: Please pardon the inferior photographs on this listing. On short notice we had to use a point-and-shoot camera for these instead of our usual professional set up.