Fishing - The boo boys

I will try to cut and paste this from the Wall St Journal
If it does'nt work
I will post the url - but you must be a subscriber to the WSJ

As of Saturday, March 17, 2007

Here!

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A Rift Runs Through It
The Boo Boys had a sweet deal, making legendary bamboo fly-fishing
rods and dropping their tools when the trout were jumping. Then modernity
intruded.
By JONATHAN EIG
March 17, 2007; Page P1

TWIN BRIDGES, Mont. -- When Glenn Brackett talks about fishing rods,
the Boo Boys listen. When Mr. Brackett says he can feel the soul of the
universe bend with the arc of a finely made bamboo rod, the Boo Boys agree.
When Mr. Brackett says a man's spirit goes into every piece of cane he
shapes, the Boo Boys know exactly what he means. And if Mr. Brackett is in
the mood to listen to the Grateful Dead while he works, the Boys usually
agree that the Dead is just right.

Mr. Brackett is widely considered one of the world's best builders of
high-end bamboo fishing rods. The Boo Boys (boo is short for bamboo) have
worked with him for years, and they treat him like a rock star. He is a
short, soft-spoken man of 67, with white hair and beard, and pinkish
cheeks -- the sort of person who can walk into a noisy bar and make the
place seem as calm as a library.

Glenn Brackett in his workshop.
A little more than a year ago, quite suddenly, Mr. Brackett announced
that he would no longer build fishing rods for R.L. Winston Co., his place
of work for more than 20 years. Naturally, the Boo Boys -- Jerry Kustich,
Jeff Walker and Wayne Maca -- said they wouldn't either. They resigned from
Winston and made plans to set up their own business, along with Mr.
Brackett, across the street from the cozy little workshop where they all
thought they would continue to labor for the rest of their lives -- or at
least until they were so old that life seemed too short for anything but
fishing.

Thus, a new company, Sweetgrass Rods, was born -- and along with it,
the biggest controversy to hit the laid-back world of fly-fishing since the
advent of fiberglass. Today, collectors are scrambling to buy Mr. Brackett's
old rods at ever-rising prices. And fly-fishermen who prefer bamboo wait
anxiously to see whether either company can produce rods with the sweet
touch that was associated for so long with both Winston and Glenn Brackett.

A lot of fly-fishermen come to Twin Bridges, Mont., where the
Beaverhead, Ruby and Big Hole rivers come together to form the Jefferson,
and where a two-lane road cuts quietly through Ruby Valley at the foot of
the Tobacco Root Mountains. They come for trout, tranquility and coffee that
still costs less than a buck a cup. R.L. Winston Co., created in 1929, moved
here in 1976 from San Francisco in large part because its two owners at the
time wanted to be where the fishing was good. One of those owners was Glenn
Brackett.

PODCAST

Glenn Brackett is the preeminent maker of bamboo fly fishing rods. But
WSJ's Jonathan Eig says the master not only struggles to make a living, but
also to keep his craft alive.The art of bamboo is a subtle one. Rod builders
cut spaghetti-thin strips from the woody rind of a bamboo stalk, plane and
glue the strips together to form what's called a blank, then wrap the blank
with fine silk thread before applying varnish and attaching the cork grip
and reel seat. The finished product is a wondrous sight: delicate yet
strong, and polished to a honeyed glow. If pressed, the men can build a rod
in 24 working hours. But during fishing season, when distractions abound,
production can slow dramatically.

Bamboo adherents say they like the rods for their line and loop
control, for their beauty, and for a certain sense that each cast connects
them with the arc of the sport's history. Winston typically sells about 100
bamboo rods a year at up to $3,000 each. But even in a good year, sales
aren't enough to affect the company's bottom line.

An estimated two million Americans consider themselves active
fly-fishermen. The overwhelming majority of them fish with rods made of
graphite, which are lighter, more powerful, and more durable. Bamboo,
Winston officials say, accounts for far less than 1% of total sales. In
1992, the movie "A River Runs Through It" helped advertise the sport's
serenity, and contributed to a modest business boom for rod makers. Since
then sales have steadily slipped.

The more popular the graphite rods became in recent years, the more
Mr. Brackett and his grungy Boo Boys came to embody Winston's public image.
They worked with their hands, invited fishermen visiting the area to sit by
their sides, and cracked open cans of beer after long days of labor. They
made customers feel as if they were buying a magic wand that could transport
them back in time with a single stroke.

Split bamboo (top); Boo Boys (clockwise from left) Jeff Walker,
Mr. Kustich, Mr. Brackett and Wayne Maca; Winston Rods CEO Woody Woodard
(right).
Before long, however, Winston's corporate culture changed. In 1991,
Mr. Brackett and his co-owner, Tom Morgan, sold the company to David
Ondaatje, a fly-fishing fanatic from Canada who now lives in Southern
California. Mr. Ondaatje said he loved everything Winston stood for, but he
also believed the company needed to grow and change.

Some of Mr. Ondaatje's first moves worried the Boo Boys. He hired a
CEO who had spent much of his career with General Electric and had no
background in fishing. He moved the company out of its garage-size workshop
and into a state-of-the-art factory down at the end of Twin Bridges' Main
Street. And he began pushing new rod designs intended to help Winston
compete with its cutting-edge rivals.

Not everything changed: No one tinkered with the bamboo designs. And
when the Boo Boys said they didn't want to move to the new factory, they
were permitted to stay in their old workshop. Mr. Ondaatje and his new CEO
continued to stress that the Winston name would stand for quality and
attention to detail. They held firm on their commitment to sell only in
select fly shops even though they could have boosted distribution by going
through big retailers.

Still, the Boo Boys felt the wind had shifted. Winston later decided
to have some of its low-end rods built in China, a move that the company
said had no effect on jobs in Montana. Winston employs about 65 full- and
part-time workers, making it far and away the biggest employer in Twin
Bridges, population 400.

Alone in their old shop, Mr. Brackett and the Boo Boys became
isolated, physically and psychologically, from the rest of the company. They
blamed the new CEO, Mike "Woody" Woodard, for creating what they described
as a bean-counter mentality. Some of the Boo boys handed out bumper stickers
that read: "TO REALLY CUT COSTS, OUTSOURCE THE CEO."

Fish in hand
"They wanted to make the corporate thing more overpowering than the
artisan thing," says Jerry Kustich, who worked part-time in the bamboo shop,
making $9.50 an hour. "We just decided that at our ages, it wasn't worth
sacrificing everything we thought was important."

Mr. Woodard saw matters differently. He says the bamboo craftsmen
seldom worked more than 30 hours a week and enjoyed long vacations. The
company let them go at their own pace, never pushing them to increase
production. "I could never understand why they left," says Mr. Woodard, a
tall, gray-haired man who wears jeans and Winston fleece pullovers to work.
"These guys had the softest jobs."

Both sides agree that the split came in the fall of 2005, when Mr.
Brackett tried to hire an apprentice -- someone to replace Jeff Walker, who
was planning to leave to pursue his other business interests, and someone
who would eventually carry on the tradition as Winston's chief builder of
bamboo rods. Mr. Woodard wouldn't allow it.

Mr. Brackett offered his resignation. When Mr. Woodard accepted it,
Mr. Brackett was shocked.

"Nobody said, 'Wait!' " Mr. Brackett recalls. "I didn't mean for my
departure. I always imagined staying in place and dying at the bench -- the
Winston bench."

But the line had been snapped, and neither side was inclined to try to
repair it. The Boo Boys followed their leader and soon after announced the
creation of Sweetgrass Rods.

Mr. Walker offered to house the operation in his garage. They painted
it green with orange trim and came up with a logo that shows two fish
swimming in a yin-yang symbol. As word spread through the fly-fishing
community that Winston's bamboo craftsmen had split off, the Boo Boys'
phones started ringing. Some collectors were eager to buy the last remaining
rods built during Mr. Brackett's tenure at Winston. Others asked when the
first Sweetgrass rods would be ready.

Before long, Sweetgrass had orders for more than 200 rods, which even
if they'd been running at peak capacity, likely would have taken them two
years to fill. But for a long time, neither Sweetgrass nor Winston were
capable of building anything. Sweetgrass lacked the inventory and equipment,
and Winston lacked the know-how.

For the better part of a year, there were no bamboo fly-fishing rods
at all coming out of Twin Bridges.

The Boo Boys admit they hadn't realized how much work would go into
starting their own business and assembling all the equipment needed to build
rods to their standards. Mr. Woodard says he was determined that Winston
wouldn't ship any bamboo until he was certain that the product was at least
as good as those previously made by Mr. Brackett and his team.

One recent winter morning, with snow blowing through the valley and
wind whistling against the windows, Messrs. Brackett, Kustich, Walker and
Maca were bumping around their new shop, along with four good-natured dogs
of various sizes and colors. A newly acquired band-saw was slicing thin
wedges of bamboo and spitting out sawdust while Jerry Garcia strummed on the
stereo. The men were once again doing what they loved.

The Boo Boys have refused to take deposits for rods until they're more
certain of when they'll begin shipping product. They hope to complete their
first rod next month. If all goes well, they might ship 50 this year.

The great irony of their fallout with Winston, given how repulsed the
men are by big business, is that their move turned out to be a brilliant bit
of marketing. As word spread through the fishing world that Mr. Brackett had
parted ways with Winston over differences in philosophy, it added to the rod
builders' already considerable mystique. Now they're seen not only as
defenders of an ancient craft but also defenders of made-in-America business
values.

Mr. Woodard says the departure of the Boo Boys hasn't affected the
company's bottom line, but their criticism of the company has upset many of
Winston's workers. "The implication that no one else here is an artist has
left a lot of hurt feelings," he says. "There's a whole shop here full of
artists."

Taking over the bamboo work at Winston are two veteran graphite-rod
builders, Annette McLean and Dave Schuller, and a more recent arrival named
Barb Weyer. The new Winston bamboo team has shipped about 15 rods so far.
Ms. McLean says she was worried when the first rods went out that
aficionados might say they looked or felt different. So far, she says,
customers have registered no complaints. Orders are coming in at roughly the
rate they did before the regime change, she says.

Still, it's clear that many fly fishermen are waiting to see how
things play on both sides of the divide.

"Glenn's rods were ever so slightly on the soft side of medium," says
Alistair Stewart, a 47-year-old fisherman from Chicago who owns dozens of
bamboo rods and recently purchased what he believes to be the last
Brackett-made Winston rod available on the retail market. "It's like playing
with your favorite tennis racket. You know just how it behaves. You can
close your eyes when you fish and feel the difference."

He hopes the new Winston rods will feel precisely the same way.

In Twin Bridges, Mr. Woodard takes a walk every day on his lunch
break, going north along the bank of the Beaverhead River, past the
Sweetgrass shop. Sometimes he looks in the window and sees Mr. Brackett
sitting at his workbench, fingering thin strands of bamboo. The men wave
politely at one another.

At times Mr. Brackett thinks how nice it would be go to back to
Winston, back to the company he fell in love with when he was a boy learning
to fish and his father and grandfather took him to the Winston shops in San
Francisco and introduced him to the men who worked with bamboo.

"I'd go back in a heartbeat," he says.

But he knows it's too late for that now.

--
Fred