[SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Mastering Rod Building Podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Bill Faulkner, and I'm delighted to bring you today another Rod Father's episode and featuring someone I consider a friend and a friend of the podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's been featured a couple of times before, but this time I've finally been able to talk him into doing an episode just about him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is the man, the myth, the legend, Captain Todd Vivian.
[SPEAKER_02]: of Lama Glass and Mud Hole and Foundation Outdoors Group, fame, and now back, working with Lama Glass, so Todd, welcome, how are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing good and thank you for having me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm so delighted to have you back.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a true story.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can keep me honest.
[SPEAKER_02]: It took me a while to get you on the first time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you resisted for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: You weren't interested for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: but then you were kind enough to come on and do the episode and educate us all about multi-piece rods and various types of ferials and all that kind of stuff and he's gotten really great response and then of course on a Saturday note you were one of the folks because you had no him so well knew him so well and spent so much time within that was able to kind of be on the episode we did that featured Kurt Baker.
[SPEAKER_02]: And certainly you were very close to him and the renaming of the mental education center after him and the dedication and everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's very cool to have you and, you know, Bob and Buzz on for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, but now you're back just for you, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, it's the Todd Vivian show literally.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is your, this is 15 minutes, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it is, which I, well, well, maybe it's the warm-up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you get even more credible 15 minutes than 15 minutes with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So thanks so much for joining.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so one of the things that I don't know that people know that I kind of, we kind of want to unpack today is, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a huge fan of Fuji right and in the products they make in Japan and we import and distribute here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a huge fan of a lot of the Japanese brands, you know, obviously Shimano and Daiwa have touched a lot of people and you know, we often look to, even though it's a very small market domestically in Japan,
[SPEAKER_02]: we tend to look, you know, to their bass industry for all this innovation and everything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that I talked to younger people, younger rod builders all the time, that I think they're confused.
[SPEAKER_02]: Since so many rods are built in Asia, they just sort of assume,
[SPEAKER_02]: that this was the carbon fiber fishing rod was a, you know, a Japanese invention and their reality is it is not.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a distinctly American invention and not only the first people, but the first several people or companies entities, however you wanted to find it that pioneered carbon fiber rods were here in the States, right, in a disproportionate number of them where you were,
[SPEAKER_00]: in woodland Washington and you've been very close to the this sort of epicenter of this whole thing just almost as long as it's been going on you're not quite that old but uh well yeah exactly and in reality reality woodland was kind of where it ended up at but in the big very beginning it was all up in the sea out of the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah it's yeah all right and yeah you had you had
[SPEAKER_00]: you had Fenwick up there, and then ultimately, you know, sage and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But but at the time, you know, it was, and people asked me this all the time, how did these places end up, you know, where they did, you know, and, you know, and,
[SPEAKER_00]: And in reality, when you look at the locations, short of St.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pro, I'm not sure anyone can tell you, maybe one of the slutters.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know if the slutters can tell you how they went on at Park Falls.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still tell people, if you go up there for as big an operation as they run and how many rods as they make, people have no idea how small a town is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's 2,500 people.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's tiny, so it's like, how did they land there?
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's another story for another day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But every other place, I can think of.
[SPEAKER_00]: is somewhere around a high-tech area.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, you know, it's what we used to call a high-tech area, which was all aerospace and aerospace Boeing and in general dynamics and grummen and all those people that were up there in Seattle.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can I art and lucky part in the Boeing, you know, in the Seattle area, it was all Boeing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, still is, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, there's some probably some other ones in there now, but that's how, that's where you would see these, these places, um, because that's where the material,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also where the engineering was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the guys who were, you know, you're always kind of fiddle around with something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can do something different with this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can write.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was kind of how a lot of that stuff started.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you look at so many of these, a lot of them, especially in southern California, there's only a few left down there now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there was a time when there was probably five or six, maybe seven.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know that that it was because he was in place he still got calstar you still got seeker you have now this entity that's uh... united composites uh... but that you see several things but but you used to have uh... graphite uh... you say right you had uh... saver you have yeah you had uh... was harnell out there
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was Harnell there or who I think Harnell and I think those guys were in like Utah or okay, but out west somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so fascinating.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've talked a little bit about and we'll go through this your timeline and I should tell this story too because it's one of my favorite stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: So back in the day when I was a
[SPEAKER_02]: wet behind the years brand new rod builder i'm talking about had been building just a few years there weren't so many choices First of all mine commerce wasn't a thing like it is now and at that time that I knew of the three places where I could buy a component since supplies As as kind of an amateur who didn't have a business license yet or anything else was bobma came me at custom tackle supply Jim Brit at anglers resource which was in woodland and it shared a parking lot with you at lamiglass when I was there
[SPEAKER_02]: and uh... clemence custom tackle i think scott greenberg americ tackle we're out there but i think you had to have that was wholesale only maybe i don't know i never did trade with them but yeah they would have still been out and long i went in yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: and you know, yeah, you're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And short of that, Cabellas was kind of getting the answer to Cabellas had some kit type stuff and was selling some flecks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the deal was you couldn't call him talk to anybody about anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And unless you called one walked into one particular Cabellas store where they actually had a rod builder or a rod repair guy, you could go in there and there would be nobody.
[SPEAKER_02]: You could tell you anything about that stuff to be like, sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to buy it like you see it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But so I go to visit, I was working for a company based out of Lake Oswego outside of Portland at the time, and I'd get out there once a twice a year, and I would rent a car, and I'd drive to Woodland, and it's my first trip, I'm so excited because I've never been anywhere, but custom tackle supply.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Bob took great care of me, but Bob got much more into fly stuff later.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very into fly stuff at the time, and Jim Britt was way more fly heavy.
[SPEAKER_02]: and had not just single hand fly rod stuff, but this first time I remember talking to people about spair rods, and you know how you guys fish out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I go to visit Angler's workshop, which is great, and I didn't really realize when I pulled into his parking lot that like I'm talking about, I could throw my shoe and hit lamiglass, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean literally right there, share a parking lot, and he's like, have you ever seen how rod blanks made?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, no, I have no idea, and I didn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I walk over there and he basically interrupts Dick Poezy who was, I don't know, in his office doing something work and doing something and he says, hey, this young man's here from Tennessee, he wants to have a tour and he literally walked me in and introduced me to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the two of you walked me around and showed me stuff and I even got to take home a piece of spare caramel colored at fiberglass, you know, like a remnant and I took it and used it as example to explain to customers how rod blanks were made and all this kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was it was the first time that you and I met and it's been literally 30 or better part of 30 years ago and it would be almost impossible for me to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Express and help people understand how much I've learned from you about that blanks and how they're made and what goes right with them What goes wrong with them and the things you got to consider with them I mean I awful a lot of what I know I learned from you so I'm very very grateful But that you've been in a while about the time that I met you right so so why in me back to the beginning because you spent
[SPEAKER_02]: You're still an instructor with mud hole and if it's probably taught as many or more people these classes when now you've retired But you were you've taught thousands of students through the mud hole program You shouldn't like yeah 12 to 15 thousand people.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean it's amazing and kids in schools and all the stuff so so I want to talk about that some too But we've covered a little bit that before we've covered a little bit of lamoclass But like taking you back to the very beginning like Were you a rod builder first?
[SPEAKER_02]: I would then you got okay, so how did you get into building rods in the first place?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, you know, really I, you know, out of high school, like going into the Navy, you know, I was okay, you know, my my parents weren't going to pay for me to go to college, you know, if I was going to go to school, I was going to do it on my own it was okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went in the Navy out of high school and when I got out of the Navy came back worked for the family company for a couple years.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it wasn't really something I wanted to do and do and what what did the family company do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, the one of the businesses they owned was a roller skating rig really yeah, I can see you having some mean moves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, we did we, you know, yeah and it was yeah, it was we had a good time.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's probably a bunch of young people listening to his podcast that don't even know what a roller skating rink is, but look it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's well for our inline skates, and it was something that used to be cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Used to have birthday parties there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You said, yeah, it was a big deal.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had formative moments on roller skates.
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, okay, so you're doing that for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: You decide you don't want to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just, I wanted to, you know, I decided I wanted to go to school.
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed to get into school.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think if I was gonna do anything,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, get a job that was going to support me, my, you know, or in a family, I need to to move on.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and were you already a hardcore angler at that point?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I've been angler since I was a, okay, as long as I, if I could, when I could walk down to the river, I started fishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, were you mostly like a salmon and steelhead guy back then or growing up was part of the country?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was what was, what was closest by would be salmon steelhead, harvest trout, you know, in the rivers and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I could get to a lake,
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely would go and, and in, in those days, you know, we had native trout in most of our lakes and stuff then, as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we'd go and we'd catch trout as well in the lakes, but a lot of pan fish, occasionally a large mouth baths, but yeah, I mean, I'd fish anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't make any difference.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you already eat up with fish and you decide to go back to school.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and I started school.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went, you know, I went
[SPEAKER_00]: The day that I finished and that I finished the day after I picked up a newspaper, you know, most days, that's where you look for jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: The class flies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I picked up the newspaper and and I looked and I thought, wow, lambglass is hiring, you know, and of course, she knew they were because you were an egg.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did because they were only at the time they were like 20 miles away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd never been there though.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew they were.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I, you know, that was the first Rod I ever built was one of their rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of missed that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got into Rod building when I first started school.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I did was because I couldn't afford a good rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted a good rod.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you could buy in those days, you could go into like the sporting good stores there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because you had LCI, you had Lama Glass, then that Fenwick.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could go and they were and the sporting good stores would have these the stands of blanks and they'd have a then they'd have a pegs with carded guide sets from Fuji.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, go to broad thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Lex code.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, just all of the standards that have been right forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and then handle, okay, I think the handle kits were Fuji as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so that's what I did about a Lama Bloss graphite steel head blank.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was an eight footer at the time, a two-piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the whole deal cost me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the blank was like $12.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, retail.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, I mean, the whole deal probably cost me $30 for everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Took it home.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was, there was no way to get instruction in those days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there was, I knew nobody who built.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was Roger had Roger from, you know, Flexco Roger.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, yeah, he had a little bit on, you know, on some of the items that he would provide about at least doing finishing and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he'd have a little bit on the packaging, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they had like a pamphlet.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was literally like a trifle pamphlet.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And other than that, I knew of no one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, rock, this was before Jim Brett and Angles' workshop with long before, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jim was still at LCI.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was partners with Gary Loomis.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and so if people don't know LCI, Loomis composite industries, not around anymore, but a precursor in existence before G Loomis.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was when Don Mulk,
[SPEAKER_00]: and Gary Loomis had left Lama Glass up in Kint when Lama Glass was still in Kint.
[SPEAKER_00]: They came down, Jim Britt joined them there, and they formed LCI.
[SPEAKER_02]: See, I didn't know Jim was at LCI.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the first that I've heard of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's how you started building rods.
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you study in college?
[SPEAKER_02]: We manufacturing engineering.
[SPEAKER_02]: OK, I was going to say you seem like you have an engineering bent.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you see in the paper that lambglass is hiring.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you answer the ad in the paper and next thing, you know, you could job there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were, I mean, I was probably way over qualified for what they were looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it, uh,
[SPEAKER_00]: It, you know, got my foot in the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: It, you know, I was excited about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, you know, it was, you know, they had good benefits.
[SPEAKER_00]: They, you know, everything went.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew that I could work my way through it pretty short.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't, it wasn't probably a year and a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was running both plants.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's, well, that's, that's the, the value to be an overqualified, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you had some headroom.
[SPEAKER_02]: What was your first job?
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you start as there?
[SPEAKER_02]: As a pattern cutter.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you don't know where pattern cutter is now these days we use these laser tables and we mess these patterns so we don't most of this material is is what we call pre-preg or pre-impregnated carbon fiber and it comes in big rolls and you roll out a long flat sheet and then the taper or flag is sort of determined by this taper you cut and it takes a really good
[SPEAKER_02]: pattern cutter is like priceless, and maybe one of the most important people in the blank manufacturing faculty, especially starts out wrong and you can't fix it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It never gets right.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be out of spec.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's never going to be right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so literally people like Todd in these days would have been taken like a metal pattern that sort of defines the shape, laying it down flat on the edge of the table, and literally using like a sharp carpet knife like razor blade, exacto knife,
[SPEAKER_02]: and cutting the sheets of carbon fiber, which would subsequently be tacked onto a mandrel rolled under pressure, wrapped cell fain, baked in the oven.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I didn't realize that was your first job, but then you were, you were definitely kind of running the plants by the time I met you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So talk to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is fascinating to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know things were cheaper back then, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But like if I go to today's modern factories and you've probably been to as many or more than I have, but so much computer modeling these days, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so much engineering, you can do rendering images and doing design and like there's a whole lot of places that they can basically design the whole thing virtually, and
[SPEAKER_02]: And it won't be exactly right, but it'll come out close enough that from there, all they got to do is tweak it a little bit and they sort of get.
[SPEAKER_02]: So some of the art and science has been taken out of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I distinctly remember Dick Posey, who was running Lambiglass at the time, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: He was all in like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was that place and that place was him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like he was Lambiglass.
[SPEAKER_02]: That guy was, you know, dedicated, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Through thick and through thin and flush years and in lean years, like that he was just such a constant.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things he told me when he introduced me to you and his sticks in my head, I still remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's like, look, there's a lot of engineering and science in these blanks, but some of it's just like bacon.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's some intuitive stuff you got to figure out about how these materials act together and how you cure them and how you get them straight and how you do all this and Todd's smart like an engineer, but he can really bake.
[SPEAKER_02]: So back then,
[SPEAKER_02]: You guys were literally doing tests and experiments and sort of completely having to develop new blanks from cutting new patterns to rolling them up at different levels and like you had to be able to calculate the tapers and stuff to create actions and powers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was really where you'd start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Any time that you start with a, especially with a new blank.
[SPEAKER_00]: you're handicapped if you have to use an existing mandrel right because because ideally any new blank should have its own tool right it's if I mean if you're going to do it correctly every every novel has its own piece of as it's own mandrel yeah and that's not how everybody does it to be clear it's not to even to this to broke
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and so what some manufacturers will do is say show me the power and action and length and what you're trying to get and then they sort of go through their inventory of tooling and the manual is this internal tooling that the blank is rolled against that's an important not the only element that an important element of the design and taper of the blank right and and they'll try to figure out what they already have that they can use a section of with the right material to sort of get what they want.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what you're alluding to is if you really want to dial it in and get it exactly perfect, you would actually machine new mandrels, specifically to that taper for use with that material and that pattern and yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime, anytime that we would come out with a new material and a new series, a whole complete new series, we'd usually do new tooling for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is the ideal way to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So were those, were you getting all your blanks?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I'm sorry, all your mandrels like machine up to Seattle or who was doing that
[SPEAKER_00]: pretty much everybody in the industry in the U.S. got him either out of South Korea, or majority of guys got him in San Diego.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah, that at CDI, I think it was, it's a specialized kind of machine, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, it's a lot like solid glass and solid carbon grinding.
[SPEAKER_00]: But pretty, you know, I mean, it's a little bit harder when you're doing it with steel and then stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, because you have the weight and everything involved in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how did you, I mean, because obviously you were like, and Dick will tell you this, Dick Posi would have told you this.
[SPEAKER_02]: He did tell me this and you know, a lot of other people tell you the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You were kind of the principal blank designer for a long time with all the stuff that Lamb of Glass was doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: How did you get from,
[SPEAKER_02]: obviously you understood the process joining as a pattern cutter and you obviously had the proper kind of manufacturing engineering background like that's perfect training for what you're doing for being able to understand how to make an efficient process and reduce defects and be consistent you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: But
[SPEAKER_02]: Talk to me how you got into the blank design stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It was that just out of necessity or was that your personal interest or is that just kind of happened?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was super interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that part of it is still is still one of the things that I really enjoy doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was it was kind of a two-way street.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things was when I first went there, we had a guy that was a Boeing engineer, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he did stuff for Dick, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he wrote some programs, some computer programs, and took our databases of our mandrels, and the tapers and everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you could, he would come,
[SPEAKER_00]: reasonably close by inputting data into, you know, as far as the type of blank that the poundage, the, you know, all of the different type of stuff, you know, selecting material.
[SPEAKER_00]: The program did quite a bit, but you had, there was still a lot of human input that was necessary.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and that was what's so fascinating about the stuff Dick talked about, he's like, just because you can math it out, doesn't mean it's going to cure straight or come off the
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, and then I, you know, and I've talked to you a little bit about this, but I have the opportunity pretty early on to spend about a year and a half with Al Jackson did brought Al Jackson in and and.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had Al Fosha on one side who was who was the engineer for Boeing, the Boeing and Al Jackson on the other side who was just a wild man, you know, and there you were in the middle, and so I just kind of sucked up, I suck it up as much as I could, I really did, yeah, you know, I, these guys were, you know, Al was, Al never, I saw him, I never saw him pick up a piece of paper or do a calculation, everything came out of his head, he'd look at, he'd tell me something.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd look at the mandrel.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, this needs 3.74 inches.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be five pies exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I'm just sitting there and I'm going, all right, and I'm taking my calculator and working this, it was always it was, and that guy was, he was phenomenal.
[SPEAKER_00]: He really was as far as that stuff goes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Was he just intuitive or was he doing all the math just doing it all in his head?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all in his head.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time,
[SPEAKER_00]: He could calculate the tapers and do the rest of the stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the guy was good.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was very good.
[SPEAKER_02]: But he was also a wild man as you alluded to.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, though it's interesting, you talk to, you know, unfortunately, Al passed recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was until recently working with Gary Lumis again at North Fort Composites in Edra.
[SPEAKER_02]: Excuse me, Edra, odds, but I think, and I think this is Vic Cutter told me this, that Al was like, so Vic thinks the world of him, which tells you something, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause Vic's known everybody and been around a long time, like he thinks the world of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and he, uh, you know, I know he thought a lot of Alan a lot of the designs and this, this kind of lighter faster, stronger mindset and, you know, the workout did, as I understand on the original original lightning rods and then I guess he worked off and on with Gary Loomis.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he did.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was, he was at Loomis.
[SPEAKER_02]: He designed the initial point blanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: He did not end up being able to manufacture him, but like so his fingerprints are all over the industry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, which is interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wish I had known him better.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a few interactions with him that were
[SPEAKER_02]: just weird you know what I mean it was out and didn't didn't leave me wanting more and so I never really saw them and now I feel bad I was like man I was close to that guy I could have talked to him that I cast several times I could have talked to him in Northford Composites I should have made a point of I wish I could have had him on the podcast but I didn't realize you sat between those two guys what what two interesting ends of the spectrum and well and that was that that was probably the best thing that could have happened though yeah because I I got it from both
[SPEAKER_00]: that, you know, crosses every, every T and value every I, oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Al, who was, he was, he was amazing and in some of the designs that he did, but you, if, if you couldn't get it out of his head, the good luck, you, you weren't going to get anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you had to be, that was the bad part, as you had to be around him a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[UNKNOWN]: It's
[SPEAKER_00]: for better for worse right yeah I mean you know I spent he was there for about a year and a half and then kind of went down the road in the golf industry yep yep and making golf shaft yeah I did and and you know and then I didn't hear much from him really anything from him until I think I was already at mud hole so he he had been gone for 12 plus years probably okay
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get to get a call at muddle, and he starts querying me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would always call me and go, okay, what's going on with such and such?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's the, one of these guys doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: How you get to hear from YouTube, but he's, yeah, that was it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's always trying to figure out where everybody was in the industry and what they were doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, he went and then he went to carrot sticks, when he got back into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was he was building stuff for carrot sticks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he did some stuff for lose and then he ended up going to China and he opened a plan of his own there, which is where he designed the point like the original.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you know, it was and he was over there for a while and I think Gary rescued him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I, I, I, I am Carl, I guess Carl Haber who I, one of the guys I purchased anglers resource from was over there once or something and it, I, I only heard very little anecdotally, but it sounds like he might have needed rescue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good on Gary for rescuing the last phone call I got from him when he was in China.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was worried that the police were going to get himself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, gosh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well,
[SPEAKER_02]: If I had to choose between Gary Loomus and the police, I'd pick Gary Loomus too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is he made a good choice, this is a wise decision and he got any did get out of there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you did end it up in Whitland again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, full circle, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you guys, you predated me getting into this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You were there for a long time before I met you in the early 90s or mid 90s rather.
[SPEAKER_02]: mid to late nineties, I guess, probably.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and then what year, but there were so many things you all did back at that time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember like the I, I 700 or I 700, I am 700, I am 700, those are such good blanks when you guys brought those out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I remember I was in love with the Paragee blanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you remember?
[SPEAKER_02]: I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So at the time, people were a little bit,
[SPEAKER_02]: Lamiglass still has, and some guys who are East Coast guys, if you're not a surf guy on the East Coast, you might have, you might fish a lot and know a lot about rods and a miss Lamiglass, but they are a big deal in the surf, still and big deal in the salmon and steel head, really good fly stuff you guys were making at that time, which is kind of what I was interested in at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it at that time, but I was interested in it
[SPEAKER_02]: But people were a little bit in and out of focus about whether they were gonna offer blanks or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: And whether custom builders were something that was a waste of time or a loss of money or something we should invest in, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And Lamiclass was always really supportive of rod builders in terms of making the full line of blanks available, which also meant when you guys innovate and developed, which you were doing a lot during that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, we were the only company that offered blank only blanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: right where we there was a lot of blanks that we offered that we didn't build in the rods right yeah but anyway fiberglass really good fiberglass stuff not just and again i know carbon fiber is the show but there's nothing wrong with fiberglass especially for certain applications fiberglass done really well is really exceptional you and i were talking about these little
[SPEAKER_02]: glass fly blanks that are among the sweetest like soft tackle and dry fly blanks I've ever had my hands on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not a stitch a carbon in them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nope.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there's definitely not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and so you all that stuff about how to make ferales and how to fit ferales both overlaps and it was ground, you know, a spigot, like you learned all that on the job at Lama Glass, huh?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, most of that had gone away by the time I got there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, really?
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so some of it we had to revive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the only thing I can remember that we really still spigoted were some like 18 or 20 foot out rigger blanks that we made.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we made those, and they were, they, we sold a lot of them in, in New York and, and New Jersey.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Massachusetts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, um, for the matter, trying to ship one of those today.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We still got, we didn't have, we didn't have fly blanks any, we didn't have those fiber, we lost fly blanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't there from the time I got there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are something that we had to bring back and, and recreate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was,
[SPEAKER_00]: it was it was that really what we what I think we had left in the in the fiberglass line there was just some mooching and light bait blanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the old traditional ones that have been around since for 40 50 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know that 80 NBA D41 E's the SB 136 3M's the the 164 M's the 1143 F's all of the different.
[SPEAKER_00]: The stuff that has just everyone knows, you know, and they, everyone's got their own recipe for cutting them up into different blanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, right, right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's rarely that someone buys one of those and leaves it whole.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's fascinating and they're built with that in mind right rolled put that in mind so people can make what they want they are you guys also in your time there Not only did you make so many blanks available, but and people forget this right now I could walk into there's a fly shop less than five miles from me here and it didn't even have to be a fly shop But I could walk in there and I can pick up almost any rod on the rack
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's going to be four or five pieces and it's going to be pretty well done, right, like if I had a blindfold on I couldn't tell you by casting it feeling how many sections are in this router, how many pieces that wasn't always the case, right, like technology and you guys did a lot of the development around that and I remember this is right at the time when travel fly blanks were becoming a thing and you guys were also a not only person, I remember
[SPEAKER_02]: that would make had some three-place three-piece blanks and also had some four-piece blanks, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It seemed like most people sort of went one way or the other, but like you had those spigot-faroid fly blanks that were four-piece, you know, we had them up to nine piece.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and I still have a little fiberglass one that I swear the sections are about this long.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think your mind inches.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still have it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the problem is, Don Morton had gotten a hold of me at that point.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I sort of built it with the Don Morton thing with too many guides on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's not the blank for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I still have it as a as a testament to my over enthusiasm and that sometimes you need to, you know, just go with what works and it doesn't have to be trendy or fancy or anything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were very cool blanks and you were right in the middle of all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you have a favorite?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean y'all y'all mess with them
[SPEAKER_02]: with the titanium tubing on the T.I.
[SPEAKER_02]: 2000s.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what I was called?
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember in that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like T.I.
[SPEAKER_00]: 2000, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I cast in 1999 in Las Vegas.
[SPEAKER_02]: And pretty cursor to current, to current, carbon fiber handles and things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jell were in your finished rods.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're building text alium handles and you know, two tubular handles that were more...
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure that, I'm not sure if we ever actually did any of the text alium ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, maybe we did, I'm not sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: in our finished rods, but we made it available for testing, for right, you know, for most of the stuff that they used on their own rods was woven carbon, or was what woven graphite carbon instead of, you know, where the text volume is a glass fiber.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, and heavier, but durable, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is super durable.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So did you have a favorite child among any of those blanks and series and stuff that you designed or a favorite material to work with?
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, I think it's always easiest to work with that intermediate modulus material, because you still get some of the great properties of sensitivity and high strain rate and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you also, it isn't so difficult to work with that
[SPEAKER_00]: your failure rate is so high, you know what, coming right off, you know, off the manual and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, and some inherent hoop strength and you know, all of that stuff that comes with it and it, and so I mean, I've got, I'm sitting here looking at a rack of fly rods above my, my computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all that's in, I mean, there's native's in there, there's the OG, ME checks is in there, but there's also the Lama Glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're the on top of the fiberglass because I've got a bunch of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a lot of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love fish and sweet rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the the little what did we try to remember what their name was for it was a because we had the we had the fiberglass composite one, but we also had a graphite that little the stream rods and they were they were tiny.
[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, it was, it was, it was like the six foot six inch to three weight, right, seven foot, three weight, seven, six, two, three, four weight, seven, nine and eight foot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we went over eight foot and it was all of the.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all of the stream rods, small water rods, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were tiny and they didn't, I think the heaviest one weight may be an ounce of a quarter or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow, that's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those were, those were a fun series to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love fishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Were you guys white label and rods for anybody else at that time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we just landed last.
[SPEAKER_00]: She built a lot of business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a huge business force.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it still has a big business for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like, you know, whether it's private label blanks or or private label rods, right, either either or so.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how long total were you at Lama Glass before you went to mud hole in the years?
[SPEAKER_02]: 20 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then so you've recently retired.
[SPEAKER_02]: Congratulations.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I see you just as much as like you see when you were working full time and you're full time charter captain in the salt spot stocker charters.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to go catch some fish, we'll put up
[SPEAKER_02]: and we talked about this a little before I'm one of the other episodes.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's hard to imagine for people now because Mud Hole is such like a full thing right with a showroom now selling clothing and lifestyle stuff selling reels, selling lines, selling lures but like it didn't start is that like there was a time when Mud Hole sold other people's blanks and then they brought you in and you were sort of in charge of the blank program and so everything you
[SPEAKER_02]: muddle and foundations become a major player in an American tackle right in in blanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much so that it's almost hard to imagine a world where they're weren't mhx blanks and in muddle blanks, but talk to me about that change and make it that you move from the west coast to Florida and then you sort of start from scratch design in all new blank series.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't that wasn't really the intent total intention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, when I went there, I mean, I was going to, you know, I was going to design some blank series and things like that, right, but not to the degree that ended up happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what really took place, I'm sorry, you were so successful.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry, we kept you so busy because everything was good.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we went.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went there in February of of 2008.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in August of 2008, Lumus let us know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were Lumus's largest blank distributor.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know what you're about to say.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember that I'm telling you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let us know that the following year, they were going to stop their blank sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, what that enabled us to do was to pre-do some orders, you know, through them, make sure that we had plenty of inventory and stock, you know, to carry us through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, I started designing, you know, a series to replace them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't realize that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have never, I would have never reverse engineered their blanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: if it weren't for the fact that they weren't going to offer them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was a bad day as a custom builder.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had spent a couple of three or four years getting a bunch of people onto those blanks and then they just continue to, and I created my own problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: People are mad at me that I can't get him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I saw my fault.
[SPEAKER_02]: They cut his off, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, you know, and Bob had the same problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, it was a huge chunk of his business at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, it wasn't three or four years later,
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was, we didn't, by that time we already had two or three series of MHX blanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the St. Croix thing, even though we were, their largest blank distributor as well, it wasn't really a matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: All we did, we had so many blanks by that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: All we did was create a cross-referred sheet to everything that they sold and we'd send it to customers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let them know that the blanks that they've been buying and what they could,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what they did reference in our line to match them up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which was smart.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, because that's exactly what people were looking for.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that's what I was looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's still on muddles website somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: They, you know, and they were other, I'm trying to remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's about the time Shikari went out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shikari went out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right about the time I went there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, so it was as a builder when you're trying to sort of build your business and build more rods, it was kind of tough days, tough sled and like all of a sudden, I can't get blank, so for you to start building them and have mud holes step in and have a comprehensive offering, it was kind of a necessity for us, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we didn't, I think a lot of people wouldn't have been able to keep going, building rods, if not for that, so we did, we did a lot of stuff at mud hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the couple three years previous to my going there, um, they started also some series of blanks that were their own product that we built for them at Lama glass it was all right, the label blank stuff that we built for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after I went there, we continued down that road.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we ended that about 2012 or so, really, you know, it was that the attitude was that we didn't need the U.S. made, you know, it wasn't as big a deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't a proponent of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would have felt much better continuing with the U.S. made line and, right, and I think that's always that should have always been at the forefront of the stuff you're offering.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and that's come full circle, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because since you're retirement from mud hole, there's been a lot of changes that I've used very positive changes at Lamb of the last, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And sort of the posy family taken back over the business and sort of restoring it to the sort of...
[SPEAKER_02]: excellence in order and reputability that the brand was sort of built on and you're in a position to help them with their new products and design stuff there now, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So so you're gonna get another bite of the apple, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how did that come to pass?
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to tell that story?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or would you have a lot about getting back with Lambiglass?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I left Lambiglass in 2008, I did work for them on and off pretty solidly for the first couple of years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would, I did some,
[SPEAKER_00]: some design work for him still still okay i told i told dip posi when i left that i would i would do it for him as long as he needed it until i got somebody that he felt comfortable with you know in the position and sure stuff so i did and then every once in a while he'd call me say hey we we're having a problem trying to design something and so
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd go through and work out a, you know, a park forum and it's in different stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Dick and I remained really close and stuff all through the years and I'd see him a couple three times a year, usually at I cast.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd see him at the ICRBE.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, some of the other shows and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then if I was up in that area visiting family or something like that, I'd always stop in and see him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, but when the company,
[SPEAKER_02]: didn't get taken over the company was it's it's a little difficult to say that they're there was we don't we don't have to I mean we don't have to go any more into it than you want to I just I think it's exciting that they're sort of I it's so hyperbolic to say rising from the ashes but sort of returning to their past stature and and make an investment in stuff made in the USA and bringing back what they're really good at and that is that is exactly what's taking place I did I received the call from John Possey who was Dickson right
[SPEAKER_00]: and like the first of the year, the very first of this year, telling me that he had taken over the company again.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had taken the company back.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had been retired for, I think, almost 10 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he had taken the company back over and he and his wife and his nieces.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was telling me about the processes that they were going through and where they were lacking and all this different stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I told him at the time I said, just let me know when you need some help
[SPEAKER_00]: training people with doing, you know, whatever you need to do, and will, you know, work out, you know, trying to, you know, get out there or helping you with, you know, with doing this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of the stuff are easy solutions, you know, to, to problems that go on in manufacturing every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of it is, is memory of, of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm surprised really to be honest with you, there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember some of these things that are 35 40 years old that,
[SPEAKER_02]: Goodness you do, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure John's grateful you do, but yeah, and so I have, I've been working on some blank designs for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some new models and blanks for them, working on some, some OEM blank designs for, you know, that are through them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything anything you can talk about yet or we two early stages to to reveal anything when's this when's this going to cut loose When do you want it to cut loose?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just I what I can say is that I am working on a On a series of domestic manufactured blanks for mudble.
[SPEAKER_00]: There'll be in the mhx of they'll be a mhx Domestic line excellent you would be available the first of a year late late December mint the late December
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm it will be in the new in the new mudwall catalog when it comes out also soon.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's great news.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what these blanks are behind me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well hey listen I'm telling you if you're a rod builder and you've only heard the name Lamb of glass or maybe you haven't heard the name of Lamb of glass that much if you're sort of only a certain part to the eastern seaboard and not a surf person you might not have I mean I guess that's feasible it's hard for me to imagine but I could have happened I don't be afraid to give them a try they've they've been in the game a long time they've been a serious source of innovation and development for a long time and certainly in my experience it's a product you can use with confidence
[SPEAKER_02]: which is good, you know, and I root for our American manufacturers, you know, partially self-serving because that's part of who are my customers, but it's also, you know, I don't know, it feels like we should be at the cutting edge of what's going on with with blank technology because we invented, I say we like it was me, but we're like you.
[SPEAKER_02]: This country and the people you've worked with were the ones who invented it and so why shouldn't we be on top if we I just like I said in the top it's a distinctly American creation and and I don't think we need to apologize for being the best in the world I know I totally agree and I'm I'm super happy that that
[SPEAKER_00]: And HX has made the decision to add this series.
[SPEAKER_00]: They see the need for it and feel the demand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be honest with you, you know, within the classes and stuff, it is, and the workshops that where I saw you at a couple of weeks ago, those kinds of events and things, the people all know, and they have known, you know, since I'm just doing the classes for mud hole now, and some of the, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: stuff, but they know that I've been working with Lamb of Us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm kind of shocked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was expecting to have to be a re-education process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's even some of that, I figured it would be the younger people.
[SPEAKER_00]: The younger people really know the product as well too, because it's been handed down to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're a product that doesn't typically
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't a throwaway product.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's, it's does get handed down from father to son to grandson, you know, and so that, you know, that the name is still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I expected to not have issues in the northeast obviously, because they had such a.
[SPEAKER_00]: such a good name up there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Northwest for salmon and steel head, but it's been shocking to me in the in the Midwest and the upper Midwest down in Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've done two two classes in Texas and I mean, everyone in the classes, you're talking to 80 some people.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't knew the product.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, new those and it was those.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am 700 like pop and rocks man like those thing that legendary down there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, that's part of, yeah, that's part of the ones that I still have right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, you have to look at, I mean, and I'm not trying to get too far too much into this, but we built, we built those blanks for
[SPEAKER_00]: for trade kissler yeah kissler rods right I mean that's what he started his business on right yeah you know for years that you know that people didn't realize it they shouldn't know where it was coming from sure right but there wasn't one of those taxes companies that we didn't build blanks for yeah you know and I I say this all the time and I think people think I'm just sort of you know full of hot air but it's like people would be very surprised if they really knew how few places
[SPEAKER_02]: in North America on this continent can roll their own blanks.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a heck of a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's orders of magnitude less than how many people sell rods that are made here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you do the math, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but that's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, and that's what makes it so fascinating.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's why some of these...
[SPEAKER_02]: episodes where we tell stories and talk about things in the past and the history is so interesting to people because it's in so many ways it's such a small world right it's it's you and this handful of people in these different entities over time working together and doing these projects you know that Todd Vivians and the Aljax and the Alkoshes and the you know Dick Poseys and the Gary Loomuses and the you know I mean it's uh that there's a very continuous thread sort of through the last
[SPEAKER_02]: 50 years of all this stuff and it it makes me happy to see that it kind of continues and goes on and it it feels a little bit like a full circle moment for you to be back helping out Lama glass so it's very cool did so yeah I enjoy it you know and it is it is something that you know I was happy to do for the family definitely I was real close with Dick and yeah and it was
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm glad to help them, you know, get back on their feet and, you know, and the whole US, it wouldn't have happened if it would have been continuing down the road of
[SPEAKER_00]: of bringing in imports.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no reason for me to get be involved in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So no, yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, you have the luxury of getting involved where you want to get and you don't have to get involved anywhere if you don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good for everybody that you all get to be together right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think it's good news.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait to see what you do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited to see these images, domestic blanks that are coming out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So much has changed in building, like, as someone who's been in the game for so long, like, what jumps out at you when you look at kind of the modern product offerings and modern blanks and Rod manufacturing, you know, so much of it has stayed the same, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like people still wrap guides on with thread and finish it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there are parts that have remained incredibly consistent.
[SPEAKER_02]: when you look at the changes in material and technology and everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what's the biggest changes from where you sit as you look at the way you do this design work today and the blanks we're making now versus when you started?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think the bigger challenges and stuff are having to make blanks for specific applications that really are difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not sure how much you have gotten involved in it,
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Revolution and and or is that what it is a revolution?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what it is?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I know that these guys are wanting completely different styles of rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, they want rods that they can reach out there for 12 or 15 feet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all in the lift.
[SPEAKER_02]: The problem with the crappy poll.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, those are some of the challenges.
[SPEAKER_00]: I luckily
[SPEAKER_00]: have kind of ignored them, but it's, I mean, I'm doing a property polls fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no issues with that, but they want to lift a four or five pound bass straight up in the air out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a lot of a brush pile with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it, you know, there's, it can be done.
[SPEAKER_02]: You may have enjoyed doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some challenges there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as far as everything else, resin systems,
[SPEAKER_02]: they can that's the one thing that they do continue to really improve yeah almost annually i mean there's there's new new things that are going into resin systems and stuff obviously we don't have any new fibers or anything but yeah and so how does how to like to talk about the residents for a second so this is really something that's just going to change weight in like strength hoop strength nick resistance break resistance that kind of thing or what we keep iterating on these because they're getting better how would you define better like
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it makes sense if they're bonding their bonding properties and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, a few years ago when they first when they first started coming out with the nano resin, uh-huh, and do you know how that those residents work here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Your your blanks might actually be using them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I do, but talk us through it for the audience if you don't mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's, you know, you've you've got these nano particles that are inserted into the resin system, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And at a certain point during the cure,
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is, you know, these, these cares in any resin system are, you know, you start out at room temperature.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to go to a specific temperature.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to hold it for a given time, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And during those, those holding times, typically the resin is going to become liquified.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens in like, like, in that nano system,
[SPEAKER_00]: is that all these particles locked together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They come together and they walk and they create like another shield.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's not like, you know, you've always had the resin that just flowed and permeate it right, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, saturated.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the levels, the layers of fiber and then hardened and the pressure would force it to the surface when it was done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what you sand it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't sound a blank.
[SPEAKER_00]: You sand the resin off the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but with the nano resin, it, that was the first thing that I ever saw that was really kind of something that was unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that you're still gonna continue to see some of those types of things come about.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you have companies that are working for, because they still do, that they're innovated
[SPEAKER_00]: in the aerospace industry right well it's parts that are going into space or into aircraft that have to have resistance is far beyond what a fishing rod does right right but also could find a home in a fishing rod make it materially better for sure for sure it can as long as it's capable of being cured in the same manner you know I mean it's you know the one thing is is that there's not too many rod factories that use an auto play for instance to cure their blanks
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and some of the, you know, there are other things out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are other materials, but the specifics of the blank manufacturing and pattern lay-up situation do not yield those materials good for that process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and that was, and that was some of the things that Al Jackson always did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Al was always.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm talking like in the early
[SPEAKER_00]: early 90s, Alice was taken 70 and 80 million modulus, you know, carbon, no scrim, all carbon, and building blanks on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and it was, and they were amazing, but you couldn't keep them together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, and these materials really were not were not designed for that type of process.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were, they were
[SPEAKER_00]: they were really intended to be used in autoclaves and different types of processes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, today, I'm still not really to be honest with you familiar with any company that's used above a 60 million modules range, you know, and that's really pushing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I can't wait to see what happens next.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fascinating to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: obviously I'm enamored with and sort of fall in love with the tech and the lighter faster stronger and more hoop strength with less material and more durability with less material and all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's also, it does feel like we're almost ripe for a, and I've had conversations with Bob Pinnica with others on this.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so interesting that we still sort of,
[SPEAKER_02]: rap that is when it comes to assembling the finished rod it's really not that different now that it was 150 years ago like everything else is dramatically different but we're still sort of assembling the same way I don't know why that that fascinates me and I'm I'm I'm I'm not obsessed with it but it's on my mind all the time and like it all it feels like that
[SPEAKER_02]: We continue to push these, as you said, we keep getting these better and better materials and most of them come from a peripheral space, often aerospace or some other extreme use where incredible durability, lightweight fuel economy, you know, thermal, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: last city or stability and incredible extremes is so we can sort of use that they're not going to figure out how to wrap a rod as fast or smarter lower labor way, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's going to have to be a distinctly rod manufacturing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't steal that from a parallel industry because nobody has a process like that, but I said in the thousands of people that we have put through the classes at muddle and it is thousands.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were in San Antonio this last weekend and we had a
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, first class we've had there since pre since before COVID.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, how was it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was down at the riverwalk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we really didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: We couldn't get the hotel where we were at.
[SPEAKER_00]: And okay, all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's get gets to the point where, you know, I mean, you get, you know, maybe when I was a little younger, it was something that, you know, we'd go out and
[SPEAKER_00]: and and stuff anymore by the time we get done setting up classes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm not really up for for going out and doing the rest of the stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but you're tired.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, we'll go in a day early and do some of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but yeah, this we didn't we didn't get down there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not was my first trip to San Antonio.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah, but I had an engine we had an engineer in the class and
[SPEAKER_00]: And he came up to me on Sunday and him and I were talking and he says to me goes now he goes I don't want any BS any of your that your BS line that you're going to get me for this he goes there's got to be a better way to to pass in those guides under those rods and he goes then just wrapping that thread and I said you know I said I I would encourage you to try yep try to find.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you will, I said, but do you, I'm going to ask you this, do you think that the Chinese that build how many hundreds of millions of rods a year and ship into this country they haven't tried?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you, if it was, if it was possible to use something else, do you think that they wouldn't do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know and and I said just think about this a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said I will truly and this is part of becoming a custom rod builder is is working through some of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen step over the years that it was really amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But right now, I can't give it, I don't know of anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I said, I have seen guys try fibers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, and it failed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen guys use shrimp tubing and it fails.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you don't get your finish through the stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I've seen some recently and again, I'm not I'm not naming any names as multiple people doing this So nobody will be single out, but even using carbon toe or carbon to it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But then you get to them.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, well, you got to wrap it with ready to get the guide fix.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you do this over.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, well, then you're I'm not sure we we I'm not sure we Innovate it any like it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's automatic then, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There is no it's all cosmetic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there is no innovation in that
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, you know from 10 years ago, there were guys who were using a specific type of product with no thread, yeah, with no thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were so they were gluing the guide feet to the blank and then finishing it with this other product.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it would hold up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem was is that it still continued to cure all constantly and eventually
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but, but that was, I mean, I've seen lots of innovations that people have tried and I give them tons of credit for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You bet, but yeah, that's we've got to still got to survive and test a ton of building.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, man, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and talk about your history with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited that you and in line with glass are working together again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I cannot wait to see which I'll do.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you get in there and find any of the sweet old matte finished spigot-farrowed honey, fiberglass, flat blanks, stashed anywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know somebody buy some of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they built some for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, did they really?
[SPEAKER_00]: They built the blanks, but they don't know how to spigot-farrow them.
[SPEAKER_00]: On my next trip up there I have to train a couple of people how to how to do this big it for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our grab the blanks and some spigot stock and I'll do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I know you would.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, they have to blanks there Bill.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, there we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you need to schedule that trip right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is urgent.
[SPEAKER_02]: I need you to get this one across the finish line, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: How's the how's the fishing in Florida man?
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been able to get out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the weather turned or the wind died down at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It, you know, we're getting a little bit of a break right now, but it is whenever it has been good enough to get out of the fish and it's been great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so most of my fishing's been in shore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's, you know, it's been and the fish is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, it's, it's, it's not as good as, as what I would like to be doing this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, because there are, there are just tons, tons of, uh, a big bull reds and there's still a bunch of tarp and left out there that, oh, wow, that didn't disappear with the mullet runs.
[SPEAKER_02]: So interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's, uh, a few of those go a long way to make an, uh, making for an interesting morning, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a text message from John Posey about two hours ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, did it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says he said two things in he asked he one was, was a
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, I found a treasure trove of boxes with fly rods that Dick had had, and he had Dick had put him away, and he goes, he says they're all, I am 700s, two handers, all in cloth bags and tubes, some of the old metal tubes, so that would be the LHSs and the other stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's like a time capsule, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he goes, uh, he says, um, not sure how many he goes, but there's a lot of lamby flag of live rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I said, I just told him I said, uh, you need to hang on to those because yes, don't don't get rid of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get rid of them because if they're had them, then there's like no, no, it could be dick would go to the lodge for a week and come back and his rod, which be back in his, his rods would be in his office.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they looked just like they did when they came off of the show room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he would clean them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would be a macula.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: that's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: He knew what it took to make one, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's easier to take care of one than have to make another one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so good to chat with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Any other advice you give rod builders?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you've taught so many you educate people like you who's like me all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, been a big part of the industry for a long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Any sort of parting wisdom or
[SPEAKER_02]: Recommendations you give to rod builders.
[SPEAKER_02]: The one that I'm like beating the drum on that I just this makes me crazy people want to spend 1,000 hours emailing about guide spacing and I just I would say test them tape them on go out in the yard and cast a test just try you'll learn so much in 30 minutes to do and I just do that don't And it bill it gets to the point and it because it is that it is this it gets to the point where what does start out taking 30 minutes ends up taking
[SPEAKER_00]: three or four or five minutes, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know when you set it up, take it out, you test cast it, get a couple of adjustments, it's over with, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's, it's, and we demo this in all of the classes of muddle.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and, and then we've got our specialty classes that we do, where everybody actually does a guide spacing on their rod on the first night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, see, that's also, but, but guide spacing should be the easiest thing that you're doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It should be, you'd think, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, we seem to overcomplicate it and make it so crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It does.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand it, but it should that and finishing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the two easiest things to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Finishing, I get.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember being very intimidated by finishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I had ever mixed a two-part epoxy.
[SPEAKER_02]: before I mixed my first coat of adhesive to glue, we'll see it on in a court grip on and before I mixed my first batch of epoxy to put a coat of finish on.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I remember being just like, what's gonna happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: What if it goes wrong, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then actually you do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you do it enough for you learning, like actually the best ways to just do it, let it do it's thing and leave it alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you don't have to overthink it or make it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We make it way too complicated most of the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Myself included, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do, and it's, and,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I talk to the other instructors about this and the way that we demo it in the class and and even Mike said to me, Mike to see, but yeah, another another the instructors and great guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said to me in class the other day on Sunday morning, he.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keep going up early and taking all the rods out of the dryers and he goes, he says, you know, he says, I just don't get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look at these, I look at the finish jobs on these rods and every one of these guys does them themselves and this is our first rod, he says they look far better than you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's better than 90% of the rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are people have been built on, yeah, as I don't get it, it isn't that hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, we make it hard, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We over-complicate it, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess if anybody really gets struggling with it, I've got a video I'll send you and show you exactly how we do ours.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, dude, I would love to post that with this episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guarantee you we're gonna get demand for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll make sure I get that link and we'll post it up because people, you gotta just trust it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, this is someone like a shutter to think how many rods you personally have built over all these years
[SPEAKER_02]: Prototyping at the factories and everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's several.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can be trusted and considered a credible source.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, I mean, believe me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a person to to set and take a ton of time when I know that there's an easier way to get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just you can get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both of the time it's better.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm have to ask Mike about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: The next time I talk to him because he does wonderful.
[SPEAKER_02]: God training set up presentations really breaks it down and keeps it simple, but gets a really good result.
[SPEAKER_02]: That that's fascinating that he's like, they've never built a rod before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is better than like some of the finish work on contest for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And and the ones that people are posting online in on their 15th rod or whatever the deal is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says it's he and I agree with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand why people struggle with it that much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is because they're trying too hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we start people.
[SPEAKER_00]: This, you know, these products are made to level them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're on their own and to do this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: The worst thing you can do is try to force it to do something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to physics.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to do what it does and chemistry is going to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't defeat it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh man.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, great stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much Todd for your time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm such an interesting conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like I said, I'm so excited.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome with Lamb of Glass again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a good day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm glad to know that John's involved.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know after 10 years of retirement, whether he wants to be or not, but I for those of us who are fans and who are rooting for Lamb of Glass, I think that's great news.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been back at it now for for almost a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think the sleeping in and then.
[SPEAKER_00]: the long mornings is over with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I suspect.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's he's probably he's back to he's he's had he's had 11 months now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: The honey moves over.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's no room for sleep and late and taking it easy in manufacturing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell you that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you so much, Todd, for joining us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you want to learn more, you know, obviously check out lamiglass.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can still go to mudhold.com, sign up for a rod building class, a great learning resources.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just, I don't know, you'll put instructors in the room that have something like 130 or 140 years of combined rod building experience, just ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: great way to learn how to build a rod and I literally, every time someone comes up and expresses any interest to me at one of these shows I'll walk them over to y'all's booth or I have cards and you know, mows there or, you know, Alex, is there somebody's there and we're always able to, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: connect them and then I get I get such a nice number of e-mails and texts and responses after we're like hey I took that class and it was so amazing I know you guys recently we're out in California and took care of my god butch Diaz which is a great guy oh he is such a good guy all those guys at 310 Rodworks are awesome I was just so shocked when I learned that butch wasn't
[SPEAKER_02]: wasn't currently building, and, and dude, I meant to tell you, I've been following him on social media.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember, that class was maybe a month ago, not very long ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it was, I think it was the 10th of October, so yeah, it was just a little less than a month.
[SPEAKER_02]: A little bit less than a month, I've seen him post like six or seven rods since then.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know I've been watching you, baby.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's built, yeah, the straight, I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But he had nothing but great things to say, and I just think it's awesome what you guys do.
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for that film.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's felt pretty comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: He should.
[SPEAKER_00]: You felt pretty comfortable when he left there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he had already placed his orders for multiple rods.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was, he was, he was, he was, he was, he was excited about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those guys are legit, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're hardcore, like long range San Diego guys, which is a very specialized, you know, wait, so he's, he's well positioned to be able to build a bunch of rods, him and Darren Dohy and Mike Irabi and all those, there's so many, you know, salty dudes out there, you know, that they know that San Diego long range thing, like, you know, making blanks, it's like in their pores, which is, it's awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're fun guys to fish with.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to get you out there and do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of these times you're lame glass or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very unique trip.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like not quite like anything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: Very, very cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Very cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, so good to see you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you're busy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for your time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope this weather holds for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you get back out on the water and get after him again.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's spot stalker charters with Captain Todd Vivian.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I...
[SPEAKER_02]: He's batting a hundred percent five star reviews with the people I've sent him so fish with confidence if the damn weather will cooperate We'll see.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad they're still tarp and hanging around I'm sorry about the wind and current everything everything else, but surely it's gonna surely it's gonna settle down It's funny that we've had a relatively mild storm season and yet we've gotten fewer fishing days when we would normally get it's like
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel guilty.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm almost like I'd rather we got in a couple hurricanes and we got a lot more fish and days in, but I I'm not that I wish I were in on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of how what usually is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, get the storm.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll have the nasty weather week on either side.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it goes back to normal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and stable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we haven't had that because of the way the storms have been just railroading up the Atlantic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've been it's been nonstop getting that heavy swell and wind off of the Yeah, yeah, no direct hits, but no calm either, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: No calm before after the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be easier if it just get it over with and be done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Seriously, uh, easy to say is someone who's house may not get flattened by that, but yeah, yeah, it's frustrating when you can't get out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they've got the I talked to the guys about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were doing a class in Orange Beach in Ian August.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, in Orange, not in Mobile, but in Orange Beach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we've had to awesome two years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll keep you up on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you're around, we'll hook up with you in half dinner.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had dinner.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there's a way you're coming and going for Orange Beach, I'm not buying you dinner.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you better believe it?
[SPEAKER_02]: That'd be awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the dates?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know off the top of your head?
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to look real quick here.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's online, I can look it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it not online in it?
[SPEAKER_02]: You heard it here first, people.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're about to scoop you on the Orange Beach Alabama Mudhold Class for next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard it here first.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a that's a great class though.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know some guys who want to take it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a kid.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to send you Marshall long if you're out there listening you're taking this class buddy.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a guy just brought home Oh, that was West not you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I said West Christie does have a pick a blank for him, but we He's he's a I don't even think he's in high school yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's kid in orange beach and a big CCA kid and then rod builder and He's into it, man, so we got to get him in that class.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that will be a problem
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I don't even have the date on my calendar.
[SPEAKER_02]: So all right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let me know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will send it to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's I think it's like the like the 10th or the, you know, in somewhere in that in that range of August.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we were going to come up.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to pull the boat up and go and hit Delicroy for a few days and then go see
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I saw you guys had a good trip.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go dude, we lit it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got two days with Captain Patrick Dickinson of Dixie Outfitters, LLC.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one day I'll show her a Captain Eddie Burger of Fishfinish Charters and man.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just like, it was magic.
[SPEAKER_02]: All three days, day one, we get our red fish knocked out and including a bunch of flounder and sheets head and they're like, hey, I think we could run out and try for Snapper, you know, just out of South Pass.
[SPEAKER_02]: You wanna try it, run out there, catch a limit of Snapper.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: where can you even do this, you know, then we go out offshore, and we get four good elephant in a really almost immediately, then decide we're going to go drop for a sword for a little while, get like a hundred pounds sword, and yeah, it was just it was one of those things where the weather clicked and the fish were just cooperating and we had such a good time, and I had to leave to make it back to be with my daughter, but the
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they wound up with like 10 flounder and they were good flatties man.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were all like 17, 18, 19 inch flounder.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, I was like, I mean, that's a hard to argue with that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, but yeah, they had a good time.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, man, it's a great time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, it was so interesting to see, you can fish and we were fishing with Brook Aliva and with Hunter McCamey.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, Hunter's a sort of still a great fisherman that's sort of a semi-retired former, you know, professional bass guy and fishing college at UCF, like very serious bass guy, very capable bass guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Brooke loves all kinds of fish and but he kind of is an offshore guy if the weather will cooperate and you want to and and you could definitely tell who is in their element right like hunter was Hunter was you know in his element fish in the insurer on those few days and Brooke was definitely in his element we are offshore catching elephant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he would he would have been free.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but we we had a good time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a great trip.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to get you.
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to go on one of these trips of this one of these times You got to tell me when you're not working or flying to Lama glass for teaching classes.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll get you down there I love going down the road down there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you guys fish Delquan some of these other areas and they're awesome, too, but man nothing quite like that Beerus down to Venice area.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just I've never fished anything like it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure there's another place like it on earth.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just
[SPEAKER_02]: the gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're special, that's for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very special.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, hell, I could probably be a guy down there.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how good the fishin' is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, blind watch could be right twice a day.
[SPEAKER_02]: And broke watch could be right twice a day down there, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think almost anybody, if you could run the boat,
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was going to say, if you can run the boat, not run it ashore with the way the stuff moves around down there, it's actually in the fog and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like some of that stuff, it's not for the faint heart, and those guys are really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not, yeah, I'm not meeting to make light of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they have tough days, just like the rest of us do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's when they really are in their key.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it is, it is a remarkable fishery.
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
[SPEAKER_02]: Well man, thanks so much for your time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And thank all of you for listening and tuning in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please remember to like and subscribe down the road wherever you get your podcast content.
[SPEAKER_02]: Until then, take some time and look up the Rod Father Todd Vivian.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll see you on the next episode of Mastering Rod Building.