The Lifetime Warranty

Pretty much every high-end graphite fly rod comes with a no-fault lifetime warranty these days. If you accidentally roll the tip of your fly rod up in a car window (been there, done that) they'll fix or replace it for you. If you slip while walking down a hill to get to the stream and launch your rod into a boulder (been there, done that), they'll fix that too. Bill broke the tip on this Sage rod on Wednesday during our fishing trip to Virginia and had the rod back from Sage this morning, less than a week later! That's pretty amazing.

I mention this because this is the second time Bill has broken a rod in the last several months. He broke a rod clean in half while trying to free the umpteenth snag on a particularly frustrating morning of nymph fishing. It was entirely his fault. I should know because as I stood there watching him flail away in anger trying to free his nymph I kept saying "he's gonna break that rod, he's gonna break that rod" and sure enough he did.

The only problem was, he wasn't fishing a high end graphite rod with a lifetime no-fault warranty. He was fishing a delicate hand-crafted bamboo rod made by, um, me that I named after my only son shortly after he was born some eight-and-a-half years ago. So the immediate question we both had simultaneously within seconds of hearing the sickening snap was "I wonder if the builder of that rod is going to fix it?" Truth be told, it has been so long since I built a bamboo rod that I've pretty much forgotten how and my tools are either packed away deep within one of the 117 unlabeled boxes in the garage or are lost forever. Or both. And since Bill's rod broke right below the nickel-silver ferrule it was going to require a new one and those bad boys are expensive.

So for the last several months I've been making Bill sweat it out, refusing to commit as to whether or not I was ever going to get around to fixing his rod. I figure the punishment fits the crime: if he's gonna disrespect a bamboo fly rod in such an overtly crass manner, he shouldn't be allowed to fish one for at least six months. But since our big FRAA2008 adventure is coming up and because our travel schedules are such that I'm not going to see Bill between now and the end of July when he arrives at the SLC airport to kickoff our fishing trip, I finally broke down and fixed the rod.

It's not too shabby of a repair job, if I do say so myself, but the varnish on the new wraps isn't nearly as good as I used to be able to do. The ferrules fit better than ever, though, and I hope that the next time he breaks that rod it's on a huge fish. Otherwise, I think his warranty period will have run out.