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)

 
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.”

(Read Part I here)

ShareThis

Bamboo fly rod builder James Beasley in his Crossville, TN workshop.

I first spoke to James Beasley more than 11 years ago, and his slow southern drawl and obvious love for bamboo fly rods compelled me order a bamboo fly rod from him at the end of the call. I’d heard glowing reports from Southeastern fly fishers about his interpretation of Paul Young’s highly regarded Perfectionist taper, and as I discovered when the rod was delivered only months later, the rave reviews were well founded.

By tinkering with the famous Young taper, Beasley created a rod that was slightly lighter and quicker than the original — one that was ideal for the small flies and delicate presentations which have recently come into vogue.

Despite its delicacy, the rod still had enough authority to throw long casts.

If the taper was wonderful, the rod itself was sublime. Darkly flamed and cleanly wrapped with a fiery brown, “golden butterscotch” thread, it impressed even at a distance. Up close, the cane work was clean and elegant. In all respects, it was a quality rod and an exceptional fishing tool.

Ten years later, Beasley has become widely known as a builder with a unique feel for Paul Young’s widely loved tapers, and orders for his Young interpretations now pour in. For many builders, this is the rodbuilder’s dream scenario; demand beyond the ability to meet it.

So why does Beasley see this success as both a blessing and a curse?

Beasley’s Background

A retired Methodist Minister who lives in the small town of Crossville, TN (near Nashville), James Beasley’s introduction to rod building came courtesy of cabin fever; in 1974, a long, cold winter drove him to the house of a friend where he learned to hand-plane bamboo rods.

By his own admission, his first rods were heavy and crude, but he learned from his mistakes.

“There aren’t a lot of builders around here to talk to, so I had to make all the beginner’s mistakes. I’ve got disasters hanging all around my shop,” he adds, revealing a dry, understated sense of humor that doesn’t emerge until you know him a little better.

The fact that largely trout-less rural Tennessee is far from bamboo rod building’s spiritual home in New England might have slowed Beasley’s progress, but by the early 90’s, he had become an established regional builder and developed a reputation for crafting quality rods.

The Walt Carpenter Connection

It was then Beasley met Walt Carpenter, a famous New England craftsman whose roots are deeply sunk into the history and tradition of bamboo rod building. Beasley spent a week in Carpenter’s shop, learning to build rods in the classic tradition, something that heavily influences his work today.

An 8.5 5wt Beasley bamboo rod — one of the best 8.5′ rods I’ve cast.

“I learned a lot from Walt,” he said. “What he taught me made a big difference in my rods.”

His ongoing friendship with Carpenter would prove useful when he built his first Perfectionist in the mid-90’s. “It was a very strong rod, a broomstick. You could cast 90 feet with the thing, but it was unpleasant to fish.” He experimented with the taper and consulted Walt Carpenter, whose feedback proved invaluable.

The resulting rod transmits every sensation to the hand, it’s quick without being overbearing, and lays out five feet of line with as much aplomb as 40. In short, it’s the seminal bamboo 7.5′ four weight, and it has fueled Beasley’s reputation as a wizard with Paul Young’s tapers.

Beasley has built dozens of Perfectionists over the last decade, and now has standing orders from a pair of top dealers for as many of the rods as he can produce. In addition, he’s being flooded with orders for his wonderfully refined Paul Young Midge taper and now the Driggs River model, and this popularity has become both a blessing and a curse.

To hand-craft a bamboo fly rod requires 30-50 hours of the builder’s time, so meeting orders for dozens of rods leaves little time for other projects. He’ll build a dozen Perfectionists this year, and when you add demand for the other PHY tapers – and the ongoing demand for his version of the 8′ 5wt Leonard 50DF – not a lot of experimenting gets done.

“I’m happy people like the rods as much as they do,” he says, “but it gets very tedious making the same rod over and over.”

“I would rather experiment with different tapers and techniques, and as demand grows, it gets harder to experiment. I like a challenge – I like to try something different.”

End of Part I. Stay Tuned for Part II

ShareThis