Craftmen who can mend injured cane rods are few and far between. I asked fly shops near my home in Asheville who might be able to repair an old Orvis 6 wt. A string of referrals led me to Lou Dondero of Hendersonville, NC. Lou invited me to bring my fly rods to his rod repair shop which looks like an operating room. He approaches repairing a rod like a doctor would a patient. What happened to the bamboo rod. Does it need orthopedic or cosmetic surgery ? How was the rod made ? What were the rod makers intentions ? On one point Lou is firm: classic rods, even the rarest deserve to be fished. So too do the inexpensive fly rods. After Lou's repairs to two of my fly rods, I fished them on the Watuga tail water down stream from Elizabethton, TN. Fishing the rods was like fishing with my old friend, who made one of the rods for me. It was like fishing with Hank again, after so many years. And it always will be.
John Ross, author of Trout Unlimited's, America's Top 100 Trout Streams
