This year has been an especially good for production at the our fly rod shop for several reasons. First off, the weather patterns associated with La Nina have been downright awful on the Prairies, which has keep us busy inside where it’s warm.  Secondly, we’ve had some great new additions to our production department.  Wade Gardner (aka the little fella) has been kicking butt, literally, in the reel seat department.  As fast as Geoff can obtain new wood/acrylic/antler specimens and slap it on the band saw, our resident little beaver has them on the drill press boring them out and then on to the lathe whittling them down.  Another valued member of our team is Brenda Markham, who is constantly slicing and gluing up cork rings by the thousands.  This is very tedious work and attention to detail is required before Geoff can use the handle blanks to go final on his lathe. 

After completing this year’s tradeshow circuit, we started in on several sets of single-hand custom fly rods - 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 weights and ran several classes on this exact subject to eager students.  After the classes was completed, we started in on our latest project … Custom Metal Detector Spey Rods. Given that the metal detector blanks were new to our shop, we had some tooling issues that we had to overcome before we could get started. The large handles required unique mandrel sizing to do the job well as we tend to do some funky things to our handles, like checkerboard inlays or integrated woods and acrylics. Once we had our tooling in place and our processes laid out, we began pumping out spey rod handles and butts. After some time spent drying up, we are able to get the handles and seats on the lathe and begin shaping them down to the final specifications.  As with everything in our fly rod shop, each component is handcrafted one at a time.  From the lathe, the handles and seats need to be reamed to final fit and off to be epoxied to the blank.  This spring production run has truly been a lot of fun and very rewarding indeed and we thank everyone for their contribution, from the mandrel-maker to the field-testers that helped us work out the bugs.

For those that are not familiar with our custom Metal Detector rods, they are a little more expensive than the factory models.  The prices are listed here and are available directly through Geoff at 403-969-4363. While we have moved along and finished off the guides on the rods, there is an unfinished area ahead of the handles where you can have us inscribe your name and/or add a feather inlay. Although these are fishing instruments, they are heirloom quality fly rods and a treasure indeed.