My Mission: To build rods that will help fish make bad decisions

There will the river whispering run...there the enamored fish will stay,...curious traitors, sleavesilk flies/Bewitch poor fishes wandring eyes.

John Donne

While duct tape may be the handyman’s secret weapon. The Orange Scud is definitely the trout fisherman’s secret weapon.

While a trout will not walk across the street for an armload of English Setter hair, it is an established fact that a trout will eat every bit of Golden Retriever fur it can get its hands on. With this in mind, for tying this killer pattern our family uses the fur from all the families Golden Retrievers past and present: fur saved from Chief, Ruff, Colby, Red, Buck, Copper, Rip and Lucky are all blended together to tie this pattern. It is tied on #12 scud hook using a gold bead and .020 thousand thick wire. It is heavy and sinks like a toolbox.

Family and friends refer to this killer pattern as the "family scud" and after cautioning against misuse and over-harvesting, I do give someaway as dubbing.

Hooked

A trout sometimes leaps up right out of the water
to take your fly, then dives for rock, log, weeds, ledge, anything shading sun
in its clear water world, slicing your line in wild

 Geometry, hurling its body into air
Against your arcing rod. Sometimes-face it-you end life by taking it in hand and cracking its head
so you can taste its gold,

But most of the time you hold its silver
and release your death from its jaw, full of awe as it lies stunned on silt slipping back into its skin, vanishes.

It's then you wonder why you're a creature who eats life but also plays it in hand. O Lord, help me to feel the hook that plays me. But so many times,
So many times, lets me go.

Orval Lund

"The best concise description of a split bamboo fly rod I ever heard--one that is both a description and an aspiration-- is that it is a 'useful thing, beautifully made.' "

--George Black quoting Hiramam Hawes in Casting a Spell