{"id":587,"date":"2003-03-24T14:54:16","date_gmt":"2003-03-24T18:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=587"},"modified":"2003-03-24T14:54:16","modified_gmt":"2003-03-24T18:54:16","slug":"technological-superiority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=587","title":{"rendered":"technological superiority"},"content":{"rendered":"

One area in which America continues to rule the world: the manufacture of first-class fly rods. Not all of them are overpriced, either. For my birthday, my wife had our friend Howard Bethel make me a four-piece four weight rod. If you need a rod built, Howard<\/a> is the man. We met him in about 1989, when I blew the advance for a bad book on the Church of England on a trip to Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n


\nHe and his wife Joan guided us around for a fortnight. He’s a wonderful fisherman, one of the best I have ever seen, as direct and unobtrusive as a cat. Unlike cats, he puts his victims back. He won’t even lift them from the water. And the rods he makes — this is the second I have had — are just gorgeous. This one has a nice fat handle for my large hand, a matt finish so as not to flash inthe sunlight, and a reel seat made from deer horn. Howard shot the deer, of course. The whole thing is understated and wonderfully efficient. It’s built on a Scott<\/a> blank, after we had a really long discussion about the style I wanted, and I can tell that I’m going to love it.<\/p>\n\n

The only snag is that I can’t land a trout with it. I lost four this weekend, all soon after hooking them, whereas the ones that I hooked on Caroline’s old 10′ #7 beast stayed hooked. I’m pretty certain that this is because of the inconspicuous olive-green line I was using on the new rod. Normally, that’s another triumph of American technology,<\/a> but it seemed pretty stretchy when I was pulling the kinks out of it on Saturday morning, and I think that it just won’t set a hook 20 metres away, whereas the bright yellow Anglian Water special on the other rod, which was made either in Taiwan or Scunthorpe, has about as much give as a chain link fence.<\/p>\n\n

Then, when I was buying my ticket at the lodge,<\/a> I noticed they had a sale on, with three-piece 10′ Powell<\/a> rods reduced from <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One area in which America continues to rule the world: the manufacture of first-class fly rods. Not all of them are overpriced, either. For my birthday, my wife had our friend Howard Bethel make me a four-piece four weight rod. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}