Part II (Read Part I here)

James Beasley is gaining a national reputation for his wonderful bamboo fly rods, which he builds in the heart of Tennessee.
(Originally written for the apparently defunct Art of Angling Magazine [who didn't return my slides], this is Part Two in a two-part series)

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James Beasley, pre-embargo cane, and notebooks from the Uslan Rod Company.

For some bamboo fly rod builders, unmet demand for their rods would be a good thing, but for James Beasley -- who professed that building the same rod over and over was "very tedious" -- it's something of a curse.

Beasley – a bamboo fly rod builder in the classic mold -- prefers to experiment with classic tapers, subtly altering them, preserving the best qualities of the original taper yet creating a rod better suited to modern fishermen.

I previously mentioned his much-in-demand Perfectionist and Midge tapers, but another example is his Leonard 50 DF Tournament taper -- a butter-smooth, full-working 8' 5wt with a bit more reserve power than the original.

It's Beasley's personal favorite rod -- so loved by his customers that he rarely had one available for his own use.

As soon as he'd build a 50DF for himself, a customer would arrive, cast the thing, and beg him for the rod. Beasley would relent, sell it, and once again find himself fishing the experiments that didn't work -- until he'd get another 50DF built, when the cycle would begin anew.

Eventually, he took the extreme step of wrapping his personal 50DF in what he described as "a truly horrible thread color – just awful stuff," and while the resulting "ugly rod" enchanted visitors with its action, the wraps "encouraged" enthusiastic buyers to wait for him to build a less-cosmetically challenged version.

If it's one thing I like about rod builders, it's that they're resourceful.

Favorite Tapers

His other top sellers include a highly castable, medium-action version of the legendary Dickerson 8013, an unusual 7.5' 6wt five-sided rod, and a handful of short Payne tapers designed to fish the nearby Tennessee and North Carolina Brookie streams.

Despite their lack of commercial appeal, he's also dabbled in a handful of longer, more-powerful tapers. One is an 8.5' 5wt – adapted beautifully from an original Orvis taper from the wonderful just-postwar 3-pc taper – which might just be one of the finest big water rods currently built.

The other is a strong 8.5' 7wt based on a Payne Canadian Canoe taper. It's a rod with enough backbone to handle summer-run steelhead yet still fishes beautifully for trout (I know because I own one), but because the bamboo rod market lies squarely with short, light rods, neither rod is likely to generate much in the way of sales.

The Beasley Canoe rod -- a rare "blond" Beasley rod glued with resorcinol. (See the purple glue lines?)

When asked why he'd bother to adapt and refine tapers with little commercial appeal, his answer is simple: "I just like it. The first time I build a new taper, it seems like it doesn't take any time at all. After that, it can get a little tedious."

The Uslan Fly Rod Connection

Beasley's rod shop is nestled in the woods behind his house, and it's filled with a lot of carefully tended, well-used machines. Surveying them, Beasley jokes that "Many of the tools in my shop are antiques – just like me."

One machine stands out from all the others; a wicked-looking assemblage that runs the length of the shop. It's a rod-making mill from the old Uslan Rod Company, which produced bamboo fly rods in the 40s and 50s.

Uslan gained notoriety for their five-sided (pentagonal) bamboo rods, but like most high-volume bamboo companies, the Uslan Rod Company didn't survive the advent of fiberglass rods or the cane embargo, and the mill, leftover cane and other equipment eventually found its way to Florida, where Beasley purchased it.

"It's taken me two years to get the mill figured out" said Beasley, standing next to the huge machine and tapping it with his finger as he spoke. "It came without any instructions, so I had to discover what everything did – and what needed fixing."

Beasley and the business end of the Uslan Rod Mill -- which took two years to refurbish.

Beasley's plan is clear; use the big commercial mill to reduce the amount of time-consuming hand-planing to just a few final passes on each strip. This preserves the hand-planed quality of his rods, but speeds production, freeing up time to experiment with new tapers.

It's tempting to make a crack about Beasley being a mad rod scientist trapped in the body of a production rod builder, but the truth – minus the bad humor – is probably in the neighborhood of that statement.

In a bamboo fly rod market where even builders with little experience sometimes charge in excess of $1500, I wondered aloud why he doesn't simply hike prices beyond his bargain $995 level, reduce production, and play more. After all, he's retired, and rod building isn't what keeps the groceries in the fridge.

To that suggestion, Beasley has a typically dry, self-effacing answer, wrapped in a big grin.

"I guess when you're lovable but humble, you'll never charge enough for your rods."