Lord Alfred, my faithful hound, considers his lunch.
He saw this bottle in the Oxford Wine Co’s Witney branch and rather vainly thought it’d been named in his honour. We’d called in on our way to Stow to visit The Old Abbot of St Edward’s for a spot of carp fishing. It’s customary to take the OA something for communion. The fishing and the wine were excellent. Lord Alfred’s lakeside behaviour was diabolical. He finds carp extremely exciting and enjoys licking them. Constantly getting tangled up in strong monofilament and leaping onto the lap of the somnolent carp angler are other favourites.
Now the leaves are turning, the carp are less frisky, unlike the grayling, and our friend Don.
Here’s a super all round rod for nymph, dry and wet fly fishing. A 10′ #4-weight 4-piece we completed yesterday. Olive wood reel seat spacer and matching joint stoppers, agate and nickel silver butt ring (stripping guide if you prefer, but still a frightful double entendre), titanium fittings, tailor made bag and probably the world’s strongest rod tube.
What’s Don got to do with rod tubes?
A few years ago, Don bought the first rod of this type that we’d built. He’s a keen grayling angler and approves of the rod. Also, he has a motorbike. The other day, some bearded ruffians set about stealing this machine. Silly buggers were cutting through the chain with a cordless angle grinder, so Don heard them and dashed out to defend his property. As he opened the front door, he grabbed the first thing that came to hand -the aluminium case for his Barder ten footer- and instinctively swung it at the villain, alerting him to the error of his ways. On impact, the little turd flew some yards through the air before landing on the pavement. His two companions carried him out of Don’s range and left the bike where it belonged.
Don told me that the rod tube was completely unmarked and the rod within unharmed, although he’d torn a muscle in his back on the follow through and he’s got to buy a new bike chain. The moral of this story is -there is no moral to this story, but we can build you superb grayling rod and it’ll come in a very smart and immensely strong tube.
Next time, I’ll either be discussing a new approach to dental hygiene or the folly of consuming too much Twyford Green. Either way, I’m pretty sure that there will be revealing pictures of a very lovely custom built fibreglass brook rod.
Until next time