SHOP NOTES | C.J. BOVA RODS

7'6" 4wt. “Shawnee Rose” and a late afternoon fall Brown    The Sun will not rise or set without my notice and thanks.  Look at nature, work independently, and solve your own problems.  ~Winslow Homer  

Counting blessings is kind of like counting fish, quantity is never really a qualifier when it comes to meaning, expertise, and experience. I feel very lucky to have mingled and worked alongside with the few men and women that have led me down an adventurous and sometimes tumultuous path since I was very young. These were all people that exercised a keen form of restraint when it came to guiding and inspiring me. Using ones hands in a spirited way to make a living in this day and age is fairly daunting and even often forgotten when it comes to present day academia. To pass on craft knowledge it takes a light touch on a young persons heart, it takes accessibility of tools and mediums, and inevitably it takes time, patience, and courage. Using ones hands is a kind of flattery to the Gods, by this I mean we are all gifted with opposable thumbs, a sense of reason and causality, and the ability to creatively visualize something before it actually comes to fruition. If we choose to ex...

For many September 26 marks the official end of the fishing season. I typically stop my trout fishing by mid-November and go through my ritual of cleaning all of my equipment, most importantly my rods. I pull my rods out one by one and wipe them down with a warm soapy mixture of water and Dove Soap. Wipe the rod dry and make sure the guides are clean. You can use a little bit of mineral spirits on a Q-Tip to get any additional residue off of the guides. Make sure you clean both the female and male parts of the ferrule. Again you can use a small amount of denatured alcohol or mineral spirits to clean them out using a Q-Tip. Many hang their rods in their given bags up in a cool dry closet, this is a good ritual. I just keep them in their given cases, take the cap off, and place them upright in my rod racks. I typically am very diligent about keeping a journal so I record the amount of use I put on any one particular rod, its kind of like keeping track of your mileage on your car. I do...