For most surfcasters, a fishing rod can define an era of your life. Sure, some of us are prone to buying the next latest and greatest, but, when it comes down to the meat of the season, a large percentage of us stick with one ‘old reliable’. These weathered sticks become partners in and of themselves, and may seem to carry luck and superstition within their layers, or somewhere beneath the thread and epoxy. I can recount several eras within my surfcasting career based on the rod I was using and seeing those old friends in photos really can bring up what it felt like to be ‘me’ in that time. It’s pretty cool.
I think every fisherman can remember his or her favorite rod and mine was a Lamiglas 1201M wrapped by my first true fishing partner Dave Parrillo back around 2007, I think. It was my first Lami and it was the first time I spent that kind of money on a rod, although it was peanuts by today’s standards. The rod itself was special. Dave got a handful of blanks from somewhere and a few of them were forest green instead of the usual satin black and he insisted that I let him wrap one for me. And he was definitely inspired by the color, letting that deep green shine through anywhere he could and accentuating it with sparse highlights of gold; even the background of the decorative ‘butt wrap’ was just the raw blank and I loved it, instantly.
Some of the best fishing experiences of my life were had with that rod in hand and many of my biggest fish were bested with it. One November week I landed dozens of 30- to 40-pound fish on it. On the last night of the bite, I hooked a really good fish in a honking southwest wind. The fish made several blistering runs before it threw the hook, 20 feet off the tip! Not even 10 casts later the rod blew up and that era of my surf fishing career ended with a sickening crack. There have been several other rods after that one, but I saved the butt section of the green one for nearly 20 years and then I finally threw it out last April.
Then at RISAA, back in March, I saw my friend and master surfcaster Frank Goncalves carrying a blank, the light caught it just right and I could have sworn it was the same forest green. And it was! As it turned out Lamiglas had made a small custom batch for someone and there were a small number of leftovers that they brought to sell at RISAA. Since breaking the 1201M, I have come to love the 1321M-OS and Frank told me that there was one over there in the green color. I was alone in the booth and I had to basically beg him to go back over there and put my name on it.
This was the definition of an impulse buy and would easily tick all the boxes to qualify as frivolous as well. But, as they say, ‘the heart wants what the heart wants,’ and I’m not one to deny it. A few months later, I placed the blank in the care of Ralph Craft from Crafty One Custom Rods in Portsmouth, RI and told him there was no timeline to finish it. When he asked me how I wanted it wrapped, I said, “Do it however you would do it for yourself.”
On July 1 I received a ‘quintessentially Ralph’ text that simply read: “Rod’s ready”. A few days later, I made the drive to pick it up. Ralph wasn’t there when I arrived, but the guys figured out which one was mine. One of them seemed extra ‘into’ the rod, he got it down for me and followed me out, to hold the door. As I prepared to stow it in my truck, he stopped me and said he just wanted to see how the wraps looked in the sun. In that moment I knew he had wrapped the rod. Kevin did an awesome job, he even featured the raw blank in the butt wrap, just like my first one. And I’m pretty well certain it won’t be the last rod he wraps for me. Sometimes you can just tell when a rod has the mojo and I can feel those Excalibur vibes from this one.
