The “Aspen” fly rod
Each year, I build a few special fly rods to donate to charities and conservation groups. An old friend from graduate school (CU Boulder) still lives in Colorado with his wife and they are active Trout Unlimited members. Long story short, they asked if I would build a rod for their annual raffle to raise money for a river restoration project in Trinidad, CO. Here is the result:
I call this rod the “Aspen” since it is finished to look like aspen bark. The rod itself is a 9′ 5wt, 4 piece St Croix SCII blank. The single foot guides, strippers, hook keeper and reel seat are all black. The seat insert, grip, and all of the wraps are hand painted to look like aspen bark. I blogged about this technique for my “Birch” rod. Here are a couple of other photos:
The rod will be on display this weekend at the Denver Fly Fishing Show and the TU chapter will be selling raffle tickets for it. The drawing will take place in April I believe.