On Aug 26, 11:30*pm, wrote:
On Aug 26, 11:47 am, wrote:

Of course there are lots of people who love cane rods, and everything
associated with them. That too is just fine with me. Each to his own.

So one day this past July I had tied my mule up a few miles back in
the Pecos Wilderness, along a beautiful meadow section of a stream up
there. I had my 3forks 3wt with me but the skies were growing ominous
so it was going to just be a lunch break and then head out. A few
minutes later a couple of guys ride in on horses, tie up and start
stringing their rods. One of them had seen my rod on the back of my
saddle and politely came over and asked which way I'd be fishing. I
told him I wouldn't be, but noticed he was carrying a very fine bamboo
fly rod. To understand how out of place it looked, he was kinda
scruffy in cutoffs and holey canvas sneakers, and normally a person
who rides up on horseback is going to have a 10-year-old spinning rod
at best, with equally old 10lb line, and will either collect some
worms or use powerbait. We chatted a bit, he had lived in the area all
his life and said his family had been there more than 400 years.
Always interesting the characters you meet in various places.

Not that this has anything to do with secondhand stores or anything
else in this thread.

Jon.
PS: I agree that, despite Wayne's once-a-decade find, a rod in a
secondhand store is 98% likely to be junk. I've seen a few, anyways.
(margin of error: +/- 37.2%)

An interesting point actually. A couple of weeks ago I had a visit
from a chap who was going to spend a few weeks in Norway salmon
fishing. He wanted me to copy a few flies he had bought elsewhere for
a lot of money, ( 40 euros and upwards per fly for relatively simple
tube flies).

I told him I couldn´t do that, but I could show him how to do it
himself. He came around a few nights and eventually dressed a few
fleis he was satisfied with.

While sitting and discussing various things over a "parting glass",
shortly before he was due to leave, I asked him why he had bought such
extremely expensive flies in the first place. He sat and thought
about it for a while, and then he said. "Well, there must be some
reason they are so expensive, maybe special material or something, and
I just feel I have a better chance of a fish with them. The whole
thing is so expensive [the fishing holiday itself], and I don´t want
to risk a failure by not having the right flies. Compared to the cost
of everything else, even though they are very expensive, they are only
actually a small part of the outlay".

When he came back, he showed me the two salmon he had caught, one
about 6 lbs, and one of just over 8. He had caught them both on the
flies he had dressed himslef, after losing a few expensive ones, and
not wanting to lose any more on a bushy stretch, he had used his own
flies "as it would not be such a tragedy to hang them in a tree".
Those were the only fish he got in three weeks of intensive fishing.

The moral? Hell who knows?