In a gripping race against the clock, bamboo rod builder Chris Raine - risking life-threatening bamboo slivers and potentially career-ending varnish burns - is rushing to complete a brook trout rod prior to Tom Chandler's upcoming trip to Tennessee.

His unprecedented days-long "speed build" of a 7.5' 3-pc cane rod has gripped the tiny Northern California community of Dunsmuir in "Boo Fever," with anxious residents inquiring hourly as to whether the rod will be completed by Saturday's departure.

"This is bigger than the Opening Day Pancake Breakfast" said one.

While many view this valiant attempt to split, build, wrap and varnish a fly rod in a few days as a selfless act of friendship, Raine immediately dispelled that notion.

"This is a test run for a new reality-based TV series called Top Boo or Sliver Survivor." "We're going to recruit a dozen bamboo rod builders with good hair and impressive pecs, throw them into a rod building shop, sprinkle in some air-headed girlfriends/boyfriends/spouses to stir things up, and then challenge them to build unusual fly rods in ridiculously short periods of time. To make it interesting, we're going to short them on tools."

"Because we want to make this show accessible to the majority of the bamboo-rod savvy public, we're not judging the rods by casting quality. Instead, we're judging soley on the basis of cosmetics. Each week, the builder with the worst varnish gets 'sent home', and has to drive down the canyon in a rusting Corvair with an annoyingly nasal fly fishing guide."

"Guest judges will include Paris Hilton, the ghost of Theodore Gordon, and Wally the Wonderdog, who will sniff each rod before whizzing on the loser's leg."

The show has drawn interest from the Bravo Channel, and will be appearing in Fall of 2006.