Now, does that suggest a motive or what! You had better hope, though, that those "Ugly Stick" ads stay on at 3 AM saturday mornings only, or you'll find an Ugly Rod in your stocking next year. For a number of reasons that will become obvious, I think I have broken more rod tips than 99% of fishermen. I might actually be a candidate for The Guinness Book of Records. As I look back on it, and actually forward to it, in most cases things worked out for the better. And I am not the only one who has benefitted from this piscatorial version of planned obselecence. I shudder to think of how my life might have turned out had my first rod had an unbreakable tip. I was 14 and had scraped together $20, or more accurately $19.95. The full page ad in Outdoor Life from Herb Klein's mail order outfit in Chicago promised, for that paltry sum, a "balanced, complete outfit" consisting of either a new fiberglass trout/panfish rod or a bass/steelhead/salmon rod, level line, Perrine automatic reel, 3 tapered leaders, assorted poppers and flies, and a casting instruction booklet. And a cloth rod bag. What a deal. Naturally, already leapfrogging reality, I chose the larger outfit. My excitement when it arrived was unbounded. The automatic reel was impressive in complexity and responsiveness. Well wound, it would zip up half the length of the glistening D level line. Just think what it would do with a real fish on the end. I managed to get the whole level line on the reel, and a leader attached, and a fly tied on, and went out onto the porch to have a go. Naturally, I had never cast a fly rod before, or even seen one cast. I knew no one who fly fished. I didn't really know, to tell the truth, where I could actually fly fish. But, I had my handy instruction book. My life then was dominated largely by reading and imagination. Now I could read and imagine I was fly casting. I spent hour upon hour, literally days, out on the porch trying to learn how to cast. The first problem, aside from trying to learn with the equivalent of a 9 or 10 weight outfit, was that the bending point of the action of that rod was somewhere between the tippet and the first guide down. It was, in effect, a nine foot priest. The only visible progress I made as my right arm bulged from the workouts, was that I could flail almost interminably. The two most durable and valuable pieces of that "outfit" were the automatic reel, which was exactly as complex, well made, and indestructible as it was useless, and the casting instruction booklet, which was actually correct. The reel, to prove the point of this whole thesis, was made without an achilles tip, so to speak. Even at 14 I could bury it in sand, disassemble the whole thing and wash it out, tensioned springs and all, and it functioned flawlessly, month after worthless month, long after the rod had been returned to that great rod resting place in the sky. Eventually, many years later, I had to throw out a perfectly designed, well working, dependable, worthless, automatic reel.
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