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Oh, my. Here is a deep, fast current to wade across, and a hole in my hip boot.

The more I see of Paul H. Young's work, the less able I feel to make definite statements about "original" rods. My theory is that you learn a lot by seeing Mr. Young as a product of the Great Depression. That he was emotionally affected by the Depression is clear from the names he gave his early rod models: "Depression," "Recession," and "Prosperity." I suspect that as a lasting consequence of going through the Depression, Young as a businessman got rods built and sold however he could manage to do it. If he contracted with a factory rodmaker to build a rod, that was great. If he got blanks from a factory rodmaker and assembled the rest of the rod, that was great. If he had an apprentice work on the rod, that was great too. If he built the whole rod and sold it, great. It was all great as long as Young made a sale, moved on to the next rod, and sold that one too. There was no thought in his mind about "originality" or what collectors might think about it seventy-five years later.

I have seen a gorgeous "Young" rod where I can't tell where Edwards stopped and Young began. Same thing with a pretty Heddon-based rod that is also partly a Young.

At this point in the little I've learned about Young, I think that post-World War II, in the late 1940's, Young really started to come into his own as a rod designer and builder. Now you are more likely to be able to talk about "original" rods. He got excited about Florida saltwater fishing and built big parabolic rods. By 1948 he was making the parabolic trout rods that would become the 1950's "golden age" Young rod models. But he suffered heart attacks and after Bob Summers came on board in 1956, it probably wasn't long before an "original" Young might have a blank built by Summers, but signed by his mentor. For the sake of efficiency, most blanks probably got built in batches, to be set aside and finished as individual rods perhaps months after the blanks were built. Possibly some late 1950's rods built by Summers or others were finished and signed by Young, and possibly some early 1960's rods were blanks built by Young (who died in 1960) but finished and signed by Summers. This is speculation and I can't prove it for any individual rod.

I do think that of all Young rods, Martha Marie Young's own 1955 "Perfectionist" must have been fully made by her husband as a gift to her. The same would be true of her Driggs, dated January 1953. The same would be true of a whole lot of rods - they were entirely built by Young. But a great Young rod is a great rod even if someone else had a hand in it, just like many great Rembrandt paintings were in part constructed and painted by Rembrandt's apprentices.

Particular care is required in assessing the Paul Young rods because Young himself sometimes varied the models over time, never mind what modifications or variations might have been made by another worker. To take just the Martha Marie as an example (and at the risk of boring those who've heard this before), the 7'6" M.M. started out with a 13 ferrule and 4 tip, went to a 14 ferrule and 4-1/2 tip, and in the 1959 catalog Paul Young offered the M.M. with two differently tapered tips, just as he had done for years with the Para 15. So these variations are all Paul Young's doing, even before we begin to consider whether or not rods built in the years after his death tended to drift away from his "magic." Young himself kept on experimenting, and an angler might or might not like the results of any given taper experiment. No matter when a rod was built, I believe that catalog descriptions and generalizations can only help you to an certain extent: beyond that point, only casting the individual rod can tell you what you want to know.