Hello all
Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 5:53 pm
Hello All,
First I would like to thank the staff for letting me in. Guess they didn't know what they've done...
My name is Arjan, I live in the Netherlands (Gouda, where the cheese is not from, because cows don't thrive in an urban environment) and besides fishing occasionally, I work as a sysadmin while I originally started out as a biologist. That makes perfect sense, until I start explaining.
Fishing has been the real red thread in my life. I started when I could barely walk and I still fish like I did when I was a lad.
Cane was widely used, in the form of Japanese poles where I'm from, but split cane was something for the happy few. Fly fishing only started late, and the first splitcane rods used and produced on Dutch soil were, as far as I know, coarse rods built after WW2. One of the names of the past was Jan Schreiner. He tried, succesfully, to get people use rods and fixed spool reels. He introduced the Dutch anglers to various types of spin and coarse rods and he did something else too: he held on strictly to the point of using material as strong as needed, but as light as possible. That's been my approach to fishing for the past 20-odd years.
Another of my examples, one I read much earlier and with whom I have a greater affinity (Schreiner could be quite pedantic, and often plain wrong) was Jan de Winter, an artist who wrote the first comprehensive book on Carp fishing in Dutch. My local tackle dealer gave me his book when I was about twelve years old, and it was full of great stories about the essence of fishing. In that respect, the second part of the book was a bit like Yates' "How to Fish". The first half was about the technical aspects of fishing. The 'materials and methods'. He mentioned rods like the Richard Walker MKiv, Millwards rods and he even went on to describe how to turn a pole into a rod by making rings of wire and how to properly secure those to a rod. I guess that's where everything went wrong. I became a bit of a tackle tart.
I've since fished with a few of the best rods produced from glass, both in Holland and the UK, but I've always felt I should try to dig in deeper, to the very essence of not only fishing, but understanding the properties of the used materials and how all hardware is made. I've rebuilt a few old rods, including a salvaged splitcane 7 weight fly rod, which is now my favorite tench rod, but I want more.
That's why I am now not only a reader, but also a member here. I would like to build my own splitcane, starting with a few of the famous tapers, and I have a dream of making a centerpin reel. If it's only half as decent (or a tenth of it) as those made by some of the very gifted people who post here, I'd be happy. Learning more of the specific methods used on the other side of the pond would be a nice by effect.
First I would like to thank the staff for letting me in. Guess they didn't know what they've done...
My name is Arjan, I live in the Netherlands (Gouda, where the cheese is not from, because cows don't thrive in an urban environment) and besides fishing occasionally, I work as a sysadmin while I originally started out as a biologist. That makes perfect sense, until I start explaining.
Fishing has been the real red thread in my life. I started when I could barely walk and I still fish like I did when I was a lad.
Cane was widely used, in the form of Japanese poles where I'm from, but split cane was something for the happy few. Fly fishing only started late, and the first splitcane rods used and produced on Dutch soil were, as far as I know, coarse rods built after WW2. One of the names of the past was Jan Schreiner. He tried, succesfully, to get people use rods and fixed spool reels. He introduced the Dutch anglers to various types of spin and coarse rods and he did something else too: he held on strictly to the point of using material as strong as needed, but as light as possible. That's been my approach to fishing for the past 20-odd years.
Another of my examples, one I read much earlier and with whom I have a greater affinity (Schreiner could be quite pedantic, and often plain wrong) was Jan de Winter, an artist who wrote the first comprehensive book on Carp fishing in Dutch. My local tackle dealer gave me his book when I was about twelve years old, and it was full of great stories about the essence of fishing. In that respect, the second part of the book was a bit like Yates' "How to Fish". The first half was about the technical aspects of fishing. The 'materials and methods'. He mentioned rods like the Richard Walker MKiv, Millwards rods and he even went on to describe how to turn a pole into a rod by making rings of wire and how to properly secure those to a rod. I guess that's where everything went wrong. I became a bit of a tackle tart.
I've since fished with a few of the best rods produced from glass, both in Holland and the UK, but I've always felt I should try to dig in deeper, to the very essence of not only fishing, but understanding the properties of the used materials and how all hardware is made. I've rebuilt a few old rods, including a salvaged splitcane 7 weight fly rod, which is now my favorite tench rod, but I want more.
That's why I am now not only a reader, but also a member here. I would like to build my own splitcane, starting with a few of the famous tapers, and I have a dream of making a centerpin reel. If it's only half as decent (or a tenth of it) as those made by some of the very gifted people who post here, I'd be happy. Learning more of the specific methods used on the other side of the pond would be a nice by effect.
mike