Glen Pointon is a well respected fishing guide in the UK who I met recently on my trip to Islay and learned a great deal from. We discussed what kind of custom fly rod would be best suited to him for his river trout fishing adventures. We settled on the Epic 476, an amazing blank from Swift Fly Fishing in New Zealand as the base. The only other requirement was to keep it simple, so with that I kept the design to transparent wraps with medium black trim bands - the "Honey and Black" was born. Featuring a reel seat turned from spalted tamarind as well as a gorgeous Joe Arguello Agate guide. The other guides are Snake Brand and the reel seat is from Lemke.
This was one of our most interesting briefs so far, a client was planning a surprise fishing trip for his father to the UK from Russia and wanted a custom fly rod to celebrate his 70th birthday and that would be a tribute to his service in the Russian navy. The lemke reel seat is finished with Karelian birch (from the Western part of Russia on the Finnish border, famous for great fishing) and the grip was turned from some birch bark that I had ordered a while back from Siberia. For the guide wraps we opted to alternate between blue and white like a naval serviceman's vest and the base of each tip includes the patriotic St George's ribbon. The Butt of the rod was finished with a button from
