Greenheart Vibration Style Rods In 2005 Clan Fishing Rods will be producing the famous greenheart rods and silk fly lines. Not just a historical curiosity. They contained the power to cast further than the current world champion can acheive using carbon fibre and dedicated casting lines.
Mr Alexander Grant of Carrbridge, Inverness-shire, Scotland, Speycast 56 yards on the River Thames at Kingston in London, in the year 1895. The distance was measured from his feet to the fly.
Mr Grant was born in Carrbridge, as a youth he was an enthusiastic fiddle player, one day he walked out of a lesson, telling his tutor his fiddle was out of tune, this led to him building his own fiddles, it soon developed into a love of working with wood.
At this early stage in his life, his other passion was fishing and soon his attention was drawn to the wooden fishing rods of the day, they were made of Greenheart (Ocotea Radiaei). The wood came from South America and it was readily available from the Caledonian Canal at Inverness, who used it for repairing canal gates and piers.
The Grant 'Vibration' rods - why?
He called it a vibration rod, because quite simply, like building the perfect
fiddle, he used a tuning fork in finishing the rod to find a certain pitch
or tone. This man was no ordinary craftsman.
He built the rods with a constant taper, there were no parallel parts to affect the action. He then invented the spliced joint, which allowed the rod to flex along its entire length, giving the rod a perfect curve. Understandably the line will follow the action of the rod.
Turning his attention to the silk fly lines, he wanted them to be tapered, this assisted the travel through the air to be as easy as possible. These silk lines were tapered from 12 down to 4 in 50 yards.
The idea is simple, the line would turn over easier
along the lengh of the line as it becomes lighter. Grant said no to cork
handles, feeling it would mask the action of the rod. Even his patented rings
closed down on the rod, this had the effect of lifting line quicker off the
water than other rings available at the time. They also permitted increased
line speed when lifting line from the water.
Contact: H
Jamieson - Master Rod Builder
- Tel: +44 (0)1479 821676