FREMONT, MI – In the quiet of his basement workshop, Wes Cooper has been keeping a 90-year-old Michigan tradition alive - that of hand-building bamboo fly rods in an era dominated by mass-produced ...

Get any of our free daily email newsletters — news headlines, opinion, e-edition, obituaries and more. Bill Blackburn’s father bought him his first fly rod at Bargaintown in Manheim, Pa., in 1958. It ...

LOVELLS — In the midday sun, a fly fisherman drew his rod back and swung it forward, casting the line ahead in a 30-foot sweeping arc. He smiled and casted some more. He looked to be enjoying himself ...

Fiberglass resins and epoxies have been around since the 1930s, but the material did not make its way into the fishing industry until after World War II. In the 1950s, glass-impregnated bamboo rods ...

Larry Donahe wants to slow it down. Not just life — though that as well — but the cadence of the fly cast, an already gracefully slow series of motions that allows the skilled angler, armed with rod ...

Their names are familiar to bamboo rod aficionados. Brackett, 69, and Kustich were among the self-named "boo boys" who built the natural rods at the R.L. Winston Rod Co. in Twin Bridges. The two were ...