Cherokeeguide
FNG
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2026
- Messages
- 56
The Made in U.S.A. Fenwick World Class fly rods made in 1983, 1984, and 1985 are kind of rare birds. The blanks were rolled by Fenwick in Bainbridge Island, WA, but they have a "subcontractor batch code" in the labeling, suggesting that the actual assembly of the rods was farmed out to a boutique builder. The World Class Reels sold at the same time were made by a small subcontractor machine shop in Southern California, rather than Fenwick, too. The World Class rods generally didn't appear in Fenwick catalogues of the period. They were primarily sold through specialty fly fishing retailers, as well. They also cost the equivalent of $810.00 in 2026 USD when new. It wasn't something I would have chosen myself and, at 18 going on 19 when I got it, and I couldn't have afforded to spend that much on a fly rod back then, anyhow.
Mine was a gift of gratitude from a very generous man. He had a daughter who, like me, was a road racing cyclist, and who, like me, often used Southern California's San Gabriel River Bike Trail on training rides. Someone had crashed her and kept on riding. She was hobbling around with a nasty gash where she cut herself on her chainrings and the rear wheel of her Masi was destroyed. I offered to get her safely home, as my VW with roof-top bike carrier was just a mile up the trail. I didn't think what I did for that young lady was that big of a deal, but when I got her home, she insisted that I meet her dad, whom, she said, would want to thank me for helping her. Her dad was a collector and user of split cane rods and I was looking at his collection of them when he entered the room. After his daughter introduced me and told him what had happened, he asked me if I was a fly fisher. His daughter answered for me, based on our prior conversation in the car, telling him that fly fishing was something that I wanted to do, but wasn't doing, because of the cost involved. Hearing that, he asked her if she would like to see me again and asked me if I would like to see her again. When we bot said "Yes" to that question, he took out his wallet and started counting out $100.00 bills into his daughter's hands, saying "get him what he'll need to get started. Make the rod a Fenwick, like yours, if possible."
Frankly, I was pretty embarrassed by this gesture at first. After talking to his daughter, I didn't think I did anything for her that she wouldn't have done for me if the roles would have been reversed. I told him I appreciated what he wanted to do, but couldn't except it and that it was enough for me that I got his daughter safely home and that she was essential okay after getting crashed. I can still hear him talking to me like it happened yesterday. He leaned into me, and in a low voice, he said "I know you don't want anything from me, and that you did what you did with no expectation of reward, My daughter likes to fly fish as much as I do. I can't always go with her and I'd rather that she not be fishing the West Fork of the San Gabriel alone, but she'll be going off to college soon, and I want her to have some fun this summer, before she goes. If she has someone to fish the West Fork with, she will." I continued to protest. He stopped me, saying "Pride is a wonderful thing in its proper place. Put it in your pocket, just this once."
That day quite literally changed my life. I doubt if I would have ever taken up fly fishing until much later in life, if at all, had that day been like any other. I doubt if I would have become a licensed hunting and fishing guide after having to medically retire from law enforcement, either, had that day been different. I KNOW I'd have never had the run as a contributing editor for California Fly Fisher that I had if the events of that day had not unfolded like they did, and without my byline appearing in CFF, I doubt it would have appeared in California Game and Fish, Los Angeles Times Outdoors, Sporting Days California, or anywhere else, for that matter.
I entered California Fly Fisher's first annual essay contest with a piece called "San Gabriel Days" which was an essay about our connection the we have to water as anglers. I started it thus: "The San Gabriel isn't much of a river. It will never be a destination of choice for the well-heeled angler who travels the world to fish. Where it flows across the Los Angeles Basin, it isn't really a river at all, being little more than a drainage ditch, a contrivance of man, flowing headlong toward the ocean between elevated concrete banks........"
I didn't win the contest (I did in 2003, with a redacted version of the same piece) but won a contributing editor slot, instead.
The young lady in my saga here taught me the basic skills I needed to know in order to catch fish on fly tackle. Together, we figured out how to catch spotted sand bass and yellowfin croaker from Southern California's shallow coastal bays, and barred surfperch from the beaches, using fly tackle. We had quickly evolved into a romantically-linked couple, too.
When she finally left home to pursue a fisheries biology degree at Humboldt State, she said "Have a nice trip," which I thought was an odd thing for her to say, since she was the one leaving Southern California for college, and not me. I said "I'm not going anywhere." She responded, saying, "Oh, you'll go far, alright, and I hope I can be there when you do," which were the last words I heard her speak.
In a sense, she was.
After she left, I received about 10 letters from her and in the last one, she expressed that she missed me and was looking forward to fishing the West Fork together during the winter break. When school was out for that, I tried calling her house numerous times, but nobody answered. When the winter break was a few days from being over with, I tried calling her house for the last time. Her dad picked up the phone saying he was glad that I called, asked me how my fishing was going, and I told him I had just had a 10 fish morning on the West Fork, and said "Is my teacher available," referring to his daughter.
He told me that his daughter was killed by a drunk driver a week before Christmas. Two months later, I read in the newspaper that he was found dead in his home due to an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. I can only imagine that the pain of losing his daughter to the hands of a drunk driver, after loosing his wife the same way three years before that, was more loss than he could bear.
In life, he spoke of the rivers he fished "as if they were women he had known."
That connection that he seemed to have with rivers that he fished was the inspiration for me to write about my own connection to one of the rivers I've fished in "San Gabriel Days," published in the June, 2003 edition of California Fly Fisher.
Too much information, I suppose, but my old Fenwick World Class fly rod is more than a tool to catch fish with to me,
. My 3 fly accuracy rods are all Sage II’s and stuff like that is typical. Not to mention all the Mitchell 308’s and Shakespeare/Langley direct drive baitcasters. My 5/8 rod is Heddon fiberglass with a Shakespeare 1973 D reel.
