Legacy of The Friendship Rod

I made a few very good friends decades ago in my little Cumberland Valley, Pennsylvania fly shop, and two of them have become intertwined in the legacy of a very special bamboo fly rod.

Meeting Tom Smithwick came as a result of a guide trip, hosting an angler who fished one of Tom’s quadrate bamboo fly rods during our day on Falling Spring Branch. Tom would eventually find his way into my shop himself, leaving an amazing one-piece bamboo rod behind. Years later, Tom moved to nearby Shippensburg, PA when he retired, and I got to spend some time with him and cast many of the rods he made over a number of years. I got in the habit of calling Tom The Taper Wizard, being highly impressed with the casting qualities of the rods he made.

John Apgar visited Scotland, Pennsylvania while working on some hi-tech hardware for the military. When he was told about the new fly shop in the village, he made it a point to stop in. The natural comradery between anglers and fly tyers took hold, and we became fast friends, fishing together during the evenings as often as we could. When John’s job location changed, we lost touch, but rekindled our friendship when I retired and moved to the Catskills. We both had developed an interest in split bamboo flyrods to the point that I was fishing bamboo most of the time and John had signed up for the class at the Catskill Fly Fishing Center to learn how to make his own.

When John told me he was looking for a taper for an eight-foot four weight rod to build during his second CFFCM class, I thought of Tom. We messaged and talked about it, and Tom sent John a taper he had designed using convex tapering techniques. I had the chance to cast John’s second rod during a fishing apart session on the Beaver Kill during the Covid lockdown. My impression was quite distinct.

We had finished our fishing and traded rods for a bit of casting. I idly pulled some line off the reel and made a cast, finding the rod to be extremely smooth and sweet tempered. Per my habit, I continued pulling some more line out and extending my casts, with the width of my smile increasing steadily. The rod didn’t feel powerful, but it just kept rolling out smooth beautiful tight loops of fly line further and further out into the river. Eventually I looked down at the reel spool and, seeing just three turns of fly line remaining on the arbor, assumed that John had a cutoff fly line on the fairly small reel. When I asked him about it, he told me it was a full-length line. That’s when I realized this smooth four weight was casting some ninety feet of fly line and leader, with basically no effort. Taper Wizard indeed!

During the next few years, John attended two more classes and made two more bamboo fly rods. After the last class, Mike Canazon, his instructor and steward of the Catskill Rodmakers Workshop at CFFCM, was impressed enough to ask John if he would be willing to serve as an assistant instructor during the following season. When Mike tragically passed away in late 2023, he left his recommendation with the Museum Board that John be named his successor.

After Mike’s passing, his best friend and a friend of ours, Tom Mason gave John some of Mike’s rod making tools and a few culms of his select bamboo. John decided to use one of those culms to make two more of the Smithwick taper eight-foot four weight fly rods, one for Tom Mason, and one for me. Mason was touched and thought this special rod should be called The Friendship Rod. John agreed and numbered the rods TSS-001, TSS-002 and TSS-003 to reflect Tom Smithwick’s taper design.

Tom Mason did not get as far as making a complete cast with his Friendship Rod, pronouncing it “perfect” on his initial back cast. My rod was finished and presented to me at the 31st Catskill Rodmakers Gathering, where the four of us spent some time talking about this amazing taper and John’s beautiful execution in making the three rods. Tom Smithwick was very pleased with the name and the way this rod taper had intertwined among our small group of friends. It was fitting that the rods brought all four of us together at the Gathering, as Tom Smithwick has been a part of these events since the beginning, one of only two men with that long association.

Seeing as the Gathering was our occasion for coming together, our Friendship Rods were offered to other friends, rodmakers and Catskill Fly Tyers Guild members to cast. The taper immediately began to build a group of serious fans, and anglers began to ask about making a rod with the Wizard’s miraculous taper. John’s list of expected serial numbers now runs to TSS-014, the numbers to be finalized only upon completion of each rod by it’s maker.

The hallmarks of character shared by these two men, Tom Smithwick and John Apgar include both an abundance of kindness and a giving nature, and outstanding creativity. The lines cast by the Friendship Rods seem poised to continue to intertwine Smithwick’s special bamboo alchemy through the lives of many more anglers and lovers of the split bamboo fly rod!