My beloved PHY Martha Marie recently returned from a six-month stay with Bob Summers, sporting a smooth new varnish job and a new cork grip. The original,
forty-seven-year old grip was dry and ridged and had begun to look like the one last wizened hot dog left out too long on the barbecue because everyone at the
party is chowing down on grilled steaks. I had given Bob the OK to either sand down the old grip, or to replace it if he felt that a salvage job wasn't
worthwhile. Bob retained the original cork reel seat, but replaced the grip. Here are before-and-after shots:
You can see right away that the new grip is thicker, and more of a cigar shape. Having fished this favorite rod often during the past two decades, I immediately noticed the difference in my hand when holding the rod. Coping with change is hard when you're dealing with bamboo. But the rod is still an extraordinary joy to cast, and when a fish rises I seem to forget all about the grip. That's a good sign.
I lamented the loss of the old grip when I realized that my hand would no longer rest on the same corks held by George Beall, the original owner of this Martha Marie - George Beall, expatriate American, professor at Biarritz American University in southern France at the end of WW II who stayed in Europe after the war. Friend of Charles Ritz and member of Ritz's International Fario Club, Beall married an artist and fished the rivers of southern France and northern Spain. He wrote articles about the origins of Spanish fly fishing and researched ancient Spanish angling manuscripts that predate Walton's Compleat Angler but use the same master-pupil dialog to convey the story. Beall owned many Young rods. Paul H. Young visited Spain in 1948, and I wonder whether Beall helped him get there and find his way around.
I stopped worrying about what Beall would say about the new grip when I remembered that this rod had already been refinished - and modified! - by the time I got it in 1990. At that time it had a Dickerson hookkeeper on it, and came in a Dickerson tube. So Lyle Dickerson had worked on the rod, and he had no qualms about adding non-original features. In the case of the cork grip, Bob Summers had made the first one, and forty-seven years later Bob Summers added this second one, so it's hard to find fault. Had the late George Beall been able to voice an opinion, he might have said, "You should have cut away that dirty old grip years ago!" The old guys didn't always fuss about the details on a fly rod the way we sometimes do, not after the hardships they'd been through.
So now my assignment is to get that new grip dirty by catching a lot of fish, so that the grip will match the reel seat as quickly as possible. I'm not eager to sand down the grip, but I must admit that I'm toying with another modification. I recently talked with an old-timer who owned a total of 25 Young rods during his angling lifetime. He really liked Young's thumb indentations on cork grips - but this man liked to carve his own indentations. He did excellent work and so there are quite a few "original" Youngs out there with thumb indentations that are not shop-original. I rub my thumb over this new cork grip, and I think to myself, "Hmmmm... I don't own any Young rods with thumb indentations... yet..." Well, I'd better fish the Martha Marie as-is for at least a few seasons before making still more changes. The nice thing about fly fishing is that there's no need to rush.
You can see right away that the new grip is thicker, and more of a cigar shape. Having fished this favorite rod often during the past two decades, I immediately noticed the difference in my hand when holding the rod. Coping with change is hard when you're dealing with bamboo. But the rod is still an extraordinary joy to cast, and when a fish rises I seem to forget all about the grip. That's a good sign.
I lamented the loss of the old grip when I realized that my hand would no longer rest on the same corks held by George Beall, the original owner of this Martha Marie - George Beall, expatriate American, professor at Biarritz American University in southern France at the end of WW II who stayed in Europe after the war. Friend of Charles Ritz and member of Ritz's International Fario Club, Beall married an artist and fished the rivers of southern France and northern Spain. He wrote articles about the origins of Spanish fly fishing and researched ancient Spanish angling manuscripts that predate Walton's Compleat Angler but use the same master-pupil dialog to convey the story. Beall owned many Young rods. Paul H. Young visited Spain in 1948, and I wonder whether Beall helped him get there and find his way around.
I stopped worrying about what Beall would say about the new grip when I remembered that this rod had already been refinished - and modified! - by the time I got it in 1990. At that time it had a Dickerson hookkeeper on it, and came in a Dickerson tube. So Lyle Dickerson had worked on the rod, and he had no qualms about adding non-original features. In the case of the cork grip, Bob Summers had made the first one, and forty-seven years later Bob Summers added this second one, so it's hard to find fault. Had the late George Beall been able to voice an opinion, he might have said, "You should have cut away that dirty old grip years ago!" The old guys didn't always fuss about the details on a fly rod the way we sometimes do, not after the hardships they'd been through.
So now my assignment is to get that new grip dirty by catching a lot of fish, so that the grip will match the reel seat as quickly as possible. I'm not eager to sand down the grip, but I must admit that I'm toying with another modification. I recently talked with an old-timer who owned a total of 25 Young rods during his angling lifetime. He really liked Young's thumb indentations on cork grips - but this man liked to carve his own indentations. He did excellent work and so there are quite a few "original" Youngs out there with thumb indentations that are not shop-original. I rub my thumb over this new cork grip, and I think to myself, "Hmmmm... I don't own any Young rods with thumb indentations... yet..." Well, I'd better fish the Martha Marie as-is for at least a few seasons before making still more changes. The nice thing about fly fishing is that there's no need to rush.
