EQUIPMENT

For the past several years I have been successfully fly fishing places usually considered off-limits for artificial flies. They are the state's brushy, tree overhung streams and spring-holes that hold wild brook or large brown trout.

What opened this water to me was first, learning to shoot line and second, developing a light weight short fly rod to do it with.

My interest in shooting line goes back to the early 50's when I first became interested in nymph fishing. It was relatively new in this country and early practitioners were forced to learn by experience.

Of course, there were reams written about it. Magazine writers borrowed material from each other, little of it factual or practical. Surmise and conjecture were palmed off as gospel and aspiring nymph fishers were discouraged in droves.

When I think of how much good fishing I missed by believing what experts wrote, I am dismayed.

Angling writers were saying that nymphs should be presented in the same manner as dry flies and recommended the same tackle. Prior to this I had used dries almost exclusively so it was natural my first attempts were with that gear. I also used dry fly technique--false casting to extend line, fishing upstream and so forth.

Eventually I noticed that the less the nymph was in the air, the more fish I caught. Fish couldn't reach the fly while it was going back and forth overhead and false casting dried the fly.

In this kind of fishing the fly should stay wet enough to penetrate the surface film immediately. Jerking it under or slamming it on the water to make it sink is bound to put fish down. Once the fly is well soaked we want to be able to cast it without drying it.

Gradually my style changed. I tried to shoot line rather than false cast to get it out. I found that by using oversize guides, the line cast easier and shot out farther with less effort.

The next step involved guide spacing. It turned out that moving guides apart increased friction and putting them closer together decreased it and shooting distance increased phenomenally. Evidently, closer spacing retarded line bellying and slap.

A side benefit, that became evident later, was much longer guide life.

The upshot of all this was a rod that was and still is a joy to use. With a weight forward line it will deliver my fly any normal fishing distance with only a single short back cast and no false casting. I can retrieve through as much fishable water as I wish, then pick up and shoot back out without false casting.

If I choose to fish on the surface, I can still false cast when the fly needs drying.

Sitting low in a canoe or wading chest deep no longer presents a problem in keeping long back casts off the water. They aren't necessary. With this rod, I can reach way out in front with only a single short back cast.

An article about the new rod in a national magazine back in 1971 brought queries from all over the country. Fly fishers began converting their rods and many sent letters reporting that the system worked welI.

The rod I use for lake and big stream fishing today is an 8-1/2-footer with a 3/4-inch foul proof stripping guide, a large tip-top and thirteen number 3 snake guides in between.

I had long been bothered with the fact that many of our streams, especially those that hold wild trout were seldom fly fished. Actually, trying to use a fly rod on them would have been, if not impossible, at least extremely frustrating.

Such water always seemed to produce a large percentage of fish too small to keep and mortality among returned bait and spinner hooked fish was inordinately high.

It seemed like there should be some way to make a smalI rod that would work welI on little streams. Various manufacturers have tried ones as short as five feet and after a season or two taken them off the market. I picked up one of these at a close-out price and began experimenting.

It didn't take long to see why they weren't successful. In fact the one I purchased was down-right dangerous. Flies went by my ears alarmingly close.

Drawing on knowledge gained from working with the long rod, I started experimenting with guide placement and size trying to make it usable.

I guess I worked on it off and on for two or three years. I would get a brainstorm, try it and find it wouldn't work, then set the whole thing aside for awhile. In fact, I gave up completely a couple of times.

The rod called for a number five line. The one I had been working with was a premium grade weight forward.

Once after an especially frustrating casting session, I was sitting on the grass idly drawing the line through my fingers when something startling occurred to me. The line had a front taper more than twenty feet long! True, it had a thirty foot belly of the weight required to make the rod work, but that was at least twenty feet back on the line.

Couple this with a minimum of five feet of leader and there was twenty five relatively weightless feet that had to be in the air plus whatever amount of line belly was necessary to load the rod.

No wonder the fly whizzed past the caster's head after a back cast. There was no way a rod that short could straighten so much line behind without dropping it dangerously low.

I cut off the front taper leaving only the belly and running line, tied on a length of leader and cast. It was a revelation.

All those months of experimenting with guide size and location paid off. I had a five foot rod that shot a level five any place I wanted with only four or five feet of line out to load the rod.

Horizontal casting, curve casts and even side-arm casts with the rod tip just over the water are easy. It's no problem to throw a fly into a culvert or under low banks.

Back casts stay nice and high without even trying and short enough to make working in close quarters fun.

It has a large foul proof stripper, six size 3 snake guides besides the tip top and weighs one and three quarters ounces.

For the past nine years, this has been the only rod I have used on Wisconsin trout streams, I fish a lot of them and catch more large trout than most. Simply because I get my fly into places other fishers can't. Even on larger, more open streams, trophy fish lie under cover that make them inaccessible to long rod users.

Front taper on fly lines originated before there were such things as tapered leaders to allow the part near the fly to alight more delicately on the water. They are still advantageous for heavy lines. However, a five is light enough so there is no problem in laying one down without splashing.

The little rod has put me, at least part time, in the rod manufacturing business.

I was the Southern Wisconsin Trout Unlimited chapter's first fund-raising chairman. For years we made a lot of money selling trout book ends. Then in 1976 our source temporarily dried up.

In the interim we assembled and sold these Iittle rods and turned all the proceeds over to the chapter. St. Croix of Park Falls made the blanks for us. Roy Sarow of Evansville, Wisconsin glued up and sanded cork rings to make handles and reel seats and my wife and I cut, ferruled, wrapped, varnished, lettered and shipped.

Ed Lloyd, veteran tyer and fly fisher at Lodi, Wisconsin, christened them.

He said "Why don't you call them "Bob Brunsell's Little Streamer"? That is what they have been ever since.

Demand far exceeded our expectations. Midway through the project it was necessary to have St. Croix make a hundred to help us catch up. They duplicated the ones we were assembling.

When book ends became available again the rod project was discontinued, but orders kept coming in.

My wife and I now assemble and ship them all over the United States, even Alaska.

We have a small trailer and travel extensively. Wherever we go, two fly rods accompany us, an eight and one half and a five-footer.