The end of (an era at) Winston rod company?

This weekend the bad news came: the whole bamboo crew (Glenn Brackett and his colleagues Jeff Walker and Jerry Kustich) resigned from the RL Winston Rod company as it seems. The story is that there is a difference in view about the successor to Glenn. The management wants to hire a successor on their merit while Glenn feels that he is the one who can say who is capable of continuing the bamboo tradition that made Winston so famous. The other issues seems to be that the management wants a huge production increase (2500 rods vs the ca. 100 now!).

This is certainly the end of an era (Glenn has worked 30+ years at Winston) and probably we are looking at the end of a great name (more than 75 years) in bamboo.

Not sure what will happen to Winston bamboo rods, the older ones and the new to be built rods. The older ones built by Brackett surely will increase in value making them even more out of reach for the average Joe. The quality of the new bamboo rods will definitely be different from the Brackett built rods. But maybe a new master builder will stand up to take Winston to the next era as a premium bamboo rod company. Although I doubt that any ambitious maker would like to work under the conditions of the current management...

Here are some articles from/about Glenn:
Glenn's view on bamboo rod making (Part 1)
Glenn's view on bamboo rod making (Part 2)
Glenn's view on bamboo rod making (Part 3)

Glenn's regret on selling Winston to Ondaatje

Glenn and the Boo boys opened their own bamboo rod making company in 2007: Sweetgrass rods.

Update March 2015:
Here is a more recent interview with Glenn.

Picture books by Apple Computers (part III)

So after about two weeks the book arrived. Even the packaging is stylish: a nice box with a big Apple logo on front. Inside de box, the book is wrapped nicely in a plastic sleeve. The first thing I noticed was that the book really feels like a book.

Let's take a look at the book! The hard cover is coated with a tightly woven texture giving the book a warm appearence. The card box that is used to give the cover the sturdiness feels pretty firm indeed. The inside part of the cover is nicely layed with a profiled sheet that forms the blind pages. The pages are glued and bound firmly. A close look at the pages that are bound shows that the pages are tightly alined. I'm not sure how durable the gluing is, but it looks a lot tougher than some professionally printed books I bought. The double side printed pages are glossy and has the right thickness.


Now, what about the quality of the pictures? I must admit I was pretty skeptical about the quality. The print outs of digital camera's I've seen so far were generally pretty grainy, especially parts with contrast and/or color differences. The pictures were probably made with camera's in the 3-4 megapixels range and probably also shot in a lower resolution than it was capable of. The more recent camera's in the 5-8 megapixels range should give better results.

A close look at the pictures in the book show that they are just below professional print quality. The sharpness is probably comparable to pictures in magazines, maybe a tad better. As mentioned before, digital camera prints can't compete with the quality of the traditional analog 35 mm film prints yet. Especially if you look real close, you still can see the 'dots' or pixels that forms the picture. Since I used many different pictures in different sizes, I wondered how they turned out. Uncropped or slightly cropped pictures turned out pretty good as (nearly) no resolution was lost. Parts (cut out) of pictures which were enlarged, some to full page while others as part of a multi picture lay out, suffers from some visible graininess. But again, this might be a lot less visable if on a smaller size book (or print out).

On the coloration side, the pictures turned out excellent. Pictures with good contrasting backgrounds are really amazing (check out the panoramic pictures). Some pictures were edited using iPhoto's 'temperature' altering function making the colors more vibrant. Other pictures, especially with darker areas and/or taken with low light situations, this alteration made them worse.


Check out some of the more technical parts of the book:








Well, this was my first iPhoto picture book. I am surprised how nice the book turned out. I had a lot of fun creating one and the joy of having a nearly professional looking picture book has to be experienced. If you want to make a memorable happening or trip to be truly lasting, you should seriously consider making a picture book. I'm sure you'll enjoy browsing through it and walk back the memory lane many times to come...

Some tips when using digital cameras

Here are some tips I found particularly useful:

* Always shoot your pictures using the highest available resolution. For showing pictures on screen you can always downsize the resolution, also downsizing the file size as well. The other way around is obviously impossible. If you are afraid of running out of memory card, just get a bigger one. The ones that comes along with the cameras (16 or 32Mb?) are laughable! But try not to buy too large (1 Gb and larger) memory cards. First, if the memory card gets damaged or an error occurs you will loose all the pictures. Better buy two smaller memory cards rather than buy one large memory card. Secondly, it takes AGES to import the huge amount of pictures to the computer all at once. I'd say get one or two 256 Mb memory cards, saving you from running out of memory all too often;

* Do try to hold the camera STILL when you snap the picture! Especially with low light situations and/or using the zoom function, this is particularly important. With low light situations you could set to a lower (more light sensitive) ISO mode, but often this will result in 'snow' (whitish grey spots in the picture). Some cameras are pretty slow with the picture snapping & storing on the memory card. Try to hold it still for a second even after taking the shot;

* When making print outs, pay attention if you want to use a smaller part of the picture to blow up to a full page. This will result in a grainy picture which is logical because the picture contains less pixels. Anything smaller than, say, 25% of the original picture will result in disappointing pictures. Of course the 'graininess' will be less visible if you make a smaller print out or order a smaller size book.

Picture books by Apple Computers (part II)

The application I'm using is iPhoto, part of the iLife suite which contains the full range of applications that's needed for the digital lifestyle: iPhoto (organizing & editing digital photographs), iMovie (editing digital movies), iDVD (making your own DVDs), iTunes (digital music jukebox & organizing your mp3's) and Garageband (music composing & editing). Every new Macintosh comes with iLife installed. For Mac users who doesn't have iLife, it can be bought at your local Apple dealer or order it at the Apple Store.

With iPhoto you can organize and edit digital still pictures. But with iPhoto you can also layout and create your own picture books, all at the comfort of your own home. I'll try to give you an idea how this works.

After importing the pictures to iPhoto, you are ready to start selecting which pictures are worth keeping and which can be deleted. It's amazing how few pictures are good enough and worth keeping. I shot almost 400 pictures of the recent trip and I ended up keeping about 40 pictures. That's barely 10%!

Most pictures 'just out of the box' are okay, but sometimes you want to emphasize a certain aspect of the picture. If you took a nice scenic view of a mountain side, you want to show the panoramic aspect of the picture. By cropping the picture to a more 'broad' proportion, the picture gains strength. Same goes for pictures where you want to show the glorious blue sky, you want to show more area above the 'horizon line' than below the line. If the gracious river is what you want to show, make sure that the water shows 2/3rd below the horizon line. This cropping (getting rid of unnecessary areas of a picture) trick works up to a certain amount. It helps to start with taking pictures the 'right way'.

After editing the pictures you want to use in your book, it's now time to select the size of the book. iPhoto has many so called 'themes' from which you can choose from. Each theme has it's own layout as well as design. After choosing the theme, you choose the size of the book. Most themes has three sizes from which you can choose. This is the first book I ordered using iPhoto, so I wanted to see what they are capable of. A hard covered book has a nice 'book' feel to it, so I ordered the hard cover version. The hard covered books are only available in the large format (about the size of an A4 page or 8.5 x 11 inches). Check out here to see which sizes are available as well as the prices.

Making a book is now merely dragging and dropping the pictures on the virtual book. On the upper part of the window, you can see which pictures are still available. The layout of each page can be changed, so if you want three pictures on a page or maybe only one page filling picture of your pet? Just press the layout button and select your desired layout of that page and drag-and-drop away!

It's always a nice 'problem' to think about which story-line to use. Making such a book gives the 'author & publisher' the opportunity to come up with a book that is entirely a personal view on a happening or trip. Just adding every picture you like will rarely make an interesting book to browse through. Surely you know such boring photo books (just ask your aunt or neighbor!). Try to limit to a certain aspect of the trip or happening. What do you want to show? That mythic atmosphere of the Greek temples? The quietness of the back country? Or the happiness of the wedding? I chose to make a picture book with just a few impressions (without descriptions) of the trip rather than a full review. Adding descriptions are possible, some themes are better suited than others though.

Okay, we are done and let's press the 'Buy book' button! iPhoto starts to crunch numbers and after a few minutes it is ready to upload the book to Apple's printing center. The size of the file which will be uploaded depends on the amount of pictures you used. My file was around 80 Mb, so a fast internet connection is recommended.

Picture books by Apple Computers (part I)

Wouldn't it be nice to make your own 'picture books' with the same professional layout and physical appearance as those books you own? With a Macintosh and iPhoto you can! Well, okay it's not true professional quality like the books I reviewed here below but it's close as you can get without spending a huge amount by hiring a professional editor and the full printing costs. Take a look how my book came to life...


These digital camera's are quite an invention. You shoot as many pictures as you like and just delete the ones you don't want to keep. When the memory card is full, just move the pictures to your computer and after emptying the memory card the camera is ready for another shoot. The quality of the pictures are improving on a nearly monthly basis. These days consumer oriented 'point-and-shoot' cameras have 4 to 6 megapixels (amount of pixels that form the picture), while professional SLR digital camera's go 8 megapixels and more. According to analog enthusiasts, the digital photography still has a long ways to go in terms of resolution (to get the same quality as a regular 35 mm film, you will need about 15 - 20 megapixels), but for general use these digital camera's are perfect.

I wanted:
* a small camera (fit in my fly vest pocket);
* capable of taking wide angle shots (no need to step backwards to get the whole scene on picture);
* fast ready-to-go time when I turn it on (moments are gone when you have to wait 18 seconds for the camera to get ready...);
* at least 5 megapixels and
* capable of taking just plain good pictures.

After some intensive research on the internet I downsized the list to three camera's: Fujifilm Finepix E550, Canon Powershot S70 and the Ricoh Caplio R2.

The Canon was too slow with getting ready (almost 3 seconds!) as well general use. Slow operation kills the pleasure of taking pictures. The 7.1 megapixels is of course excellent and the 28 mm wide angle mode (max. 3.6x zoom, 100 mm) is great too. The camera does feels very robust though.

The Ricoh has some excellent specifications. Wide angle starts at 28 mm up to a very nice zoom mode (almost 5x) of 135 mm. It's also a very small camera making it perfect to slip it into your shirt pocket. And this little bugger is FAST (less than a second)! It would have a been a real serious contender, but the guy at the shop said that Ricoh's overall quality isn't up to the major camera brands. The rectangular form factor isn't really comfortable holding it either.

So I ended up with the Fujifilm Finepix E550. It's small enough while having a great holding form factor. The wide angle isn't as wide as the other camera's (32.5 mm vs 28 mm), but the overall quality of the camera as well as the pictures it takes makes this camera a very nice camera indeed. The 6 megapixels is fine, the fast start-up (around 1 second) and operation times and the long battery life (it uses regular rechargeable AA batteries so no problems with getting extra batteries) and the nice zoom (130 mm, 4x optical zoom) made the choice easier. It has an interpolation mode where the 6 megapixels is doubled to 12 megapixels. That's great for earth shattering memorable moments (like running into Anna Kournikova while fishing) but it will fill up your memory card really fast.

Okay, so we got a camera. Let's shoot some pictures!

Some nice 'coffee table books'

I would like to share with you some books I consider being nice books to browse with a nice cup of coffee or tea. These books give the reader fuel to fantasize about destinations far away, enjoy the craftsmanship of fine fly tiers or just pick up inspiration. Excellent photographers like R. Valentine Atkinson, Brian O'Keefe and the Beck's are a few of the people who manage to capture a moment of beauty and the essence of fly fishing. Ever since I saw the book Casting Illusions at a friend, I've enjoyed browsing through these books.


Casting Illusions by Tom Rosenbauer starts with a brief history of fly fishing with the famous books 'The Compleat Angler' by Izaak Walton and Dame Juliana Berners 'Treatyse of Fysshynge Wyth an Angle'. Several chapters on flies, gear and places give the reader to walk through the history of fly fishing. Accompanied by beautiful photo's and many historic drawings, this book is a true 'relax and sit back' book. The final chapter called 'Friends' shows us what fly fishing is about for most of us: enjoy the outing with friends and cherish the moments.


Streams of Dreams by John Ross is one of those books that shows us the great destinations we all fly fishermen want to visit one day. Rather than focusing on the famouse rivers or streams we all know by now, the chapters covers countries or parts of continents of the world and their fishing possibilities. It's nice to see that the author also includes the less well known continents like Asia and Africa as possible fly fishing destinations.

Rather than an extensive coverage of the country, this book gives a concise view on the geography, possibilities and spices that can be found of that part of the world. Each chapter also comes with a little advise on tackle and flies. For more detailed information on a destination, further browsing the internet and books that are written about that specific destination is needed. But nonetheless, it's still a nice book to have a look what certain countries have to offer for the traveling fly fishermen.


Judith Dunham's The Art of the Trout Fly triggered my fly tying as no other book has done. I think that this book was probably the first fly tying book that was written as a picture book. The photography by Egmont van Dyck is simple yet effective. Although all flies shown come with pattern information, it's not a 'how to' book. This book covers a list of fly tiers from USA, Europe and Japan and their view on tying. Some tiers are true innovators (like Dave Whitlock and John Betts), while others are masters of 'keep it simple stupid' (like Al Troth and Roman Moser). I do wonder why some tiers are included though... I guess, the list of tiers was just a 'snapshot' of a certain period.


Patagonia in Argentina is for most of us one of those destinations we want to visit before we die. Fly Fishing Patagonia - The Lake District is one of the two books written by Francisco Bedeschi and Juan Pablo Reynal in this format. With the large landscape format of the book and the excellent print quality these authors chose surely give the photographs the podium to excel, the many scenery photographs are stunning.

There is no doubt that Patagonia is a wonderful place to be. The backdrops that can be seen on most of the pictures are simply awe inspiring. The book is devided in three chapters covering the three major national parks in the northern part of Patagonia. Within the parks, the most famous rivers are given a short description about their characteristics and which tackle to use.

The nice thing about this book is that it is bilingual, everything is written in Spanish as well as English. Although English isn't my native language I could find quite some weird sentences and grammars used. But since the pictures are the main attraction, this isn't annoying. The second book by the authors, Fly Fishing the South covers the southern area of Patagonia. More info can be found here.


John Cave in one luck guy. He has travelled to most destinations we mortal souls only dream about. His journey has taken him to places like Patagonia, Belize and Costa Rica. The book Fly-fishing Odyssey - The pursuit of great game fish is a particular nice book which can be browsed on a lazy sunday afternoon as well as a first introduction on the fly fishing possibilities of a certain destination. Although it covers many destinations, the emphasis can be found on salt water fly fishing.

The first section of the book contains 20 chapters on various destinations. Besides a brief characteristics of the destination and an anecdote of his trip, good information can be found on planning a trip as well as tackle to bring along. Almost all the pictures are John's own shots and they are pretty good indeed. The second section takes a more detailed look on the spices that can be caught in the destinations covered. Description, feeding habits and recommended tackle and flies are combined with a nice drawing of the fish. The final chapter contains an extensive information on the gear we need if we are lucky to be hired as a professional traveling fly fisherman. I also liked the helpful hints for traveling.


The final book I would like to show you is a book I picked up recently. Fly Waters Near & Far by Barry and Cathy Beck is what in terms of music we might call 'the best of' album. This book is in my view the ultimate dream-away-and-drool picture book so far. The Beck's, the only celebrity couple in fly fishing, have fished nearly every imaginable fly fishing destination in the world. Still, rather than covering every place they visited and fished, the book limits to 13 most famous destinations. Fresh and saltwater destinations are nicely balanced out.

When browsing through the book, it's no surprise that there is a certain deja-vu experience. Beck's pictures can be seen in all major fly fishing magazines, many books as well as commercial leaflets of manufacturers. The quality of the photographs is simply outstanding. These guys sure know how to capture the magical moments of a trip. I for one have learned a lot about taking good pictures with my camera after analzing the pictures taken by professionals like the Beck's. I guess no shame is needed to have a nice and friendly appeal like Cathy because she can be seen on at least half of the pictures. Maybe the book will be used as a resume when Cathy decides that it has been enough and wants to pick up a regular 9-to-5 job.


I'm not sure all the books covered here are still available. As mentioned, the book from the Beck's is just out, so that should be no problem. The book series on Patagonia by Bedeschi and Reynal are still a current publication. Check out at Amazon to see which are still available. Except the book by the Beck's, most of these titles have been out quite a while. So it's possible that you can get them with some nice discounts these days. The thing with books is that if it needs to be shipped internationally, the shipping costs soar to the roof...

Skyline of Rotterdam

The first week of October has been unusually warm and sunny. Temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius (high 60's F) is hardly the the type of weather that we associate with October. So I went out with my in-line skates to cruise the smooth asphalted bicycle lanes along the riverside of Rotterdam and generally enjoying the view.

I've lived near Rotterdam, the worlds largest harbor and the second largest city in The Netherlands, for almost 20 years. During this period, the skyline of Rotterdam has changed quite dramatically. The municipality of Rotterdam started an active architectural and urban development policy during the 1980's. The city is still growing, so it looks like the skyline will change again in the future. Let me show you some pictures of the skyline that makes Rotterdam so different from all other cities in The Netherlands.

Here's a view that one will see when entering the city from the eastern part of the highway system around the city. As you can see Rotterdam is divided by the river Maas. The high rise of Rotterdam has given Rotterdam the nick name 'Manhattan on the Maas'. The right side is the part where the main part of the city lies. The left part, the southern part, has always been the the underdeveloped part of Rotterdam. The main reason was due to the lacking of a good physical connection between the city center and the southern part (Rotterdam Zuid).

Until 1996 the main connection between the two parts of the city was the Willems bridge, an old old train-bridge (later replaced by the New Willems bridge which can be seen as the red bridge on the picture) just outside the city center. The other option was to take the highway and go around the city and enter the southern part, which is beyond the walkable range.

In 1996 the Erasmus bridge (also known as the 'Swan' as the structure has some resemblance of a gracious swan) connected both parts of the city in a way that goes beyond a physical connection. The development that followed in the area called 'Kop van Zuid' gave the southern part of the city a huge economical boost. Office buildings, apartments (the 140 meters makes MonteVideo the highest residential apartment building in The Netherlands) and educational buildings (college) improved the image of this part of the city in a big way. By the way, it's great fun to go down from the bridges with the in-line skates!

This is the vista that is visible on the Maas Boulevard, the avenue entering the city center from the eastern highway. The opinions on this Maas Boulevard varies. Some say it's a nice contrast to the busy roads and lanes in the city center, other say this main road into the city has to be alive with nice cafes and restaurants right next to the riverside accompanied by apartments and other buildings. My opinion is that the profile, that's the width and proportions, of the Maas Boulevard is too broad and the functional interpretation too limited to have an appeal of an avenue like many well known avenues in the world, like the Champs Elysées of Paris. Well, maybe this will change for the better in the future.

Here's a view from the New Willems bridge. This is what we might say the start of the city center. The first big building on the right is the P&O NedLloyd (a container shipping company) building, also known as 'Willemswerf'. This building is the first in a row of high rises on the extension of the Maas Boulevard called the 'Boompjes' (translated: little trees). Recently a new high rise was added to the row of buildings for the consulting firm Ernst & Young.

For more pictures of the architecture of Rotterdam, take a look at this site.

The Weisse Traun in June

For the folks who haven't seen the pictures I took earlier this June, here are some pictures. I fished the Weisse (translated: white) Traun in southern Germany during a long weekend in June.

As you all know we have no mountains in The Netherlands, so lack any form of trout fishing in streams or rivers (ah well, maybe a teeny tiny stream here and there in southern part of the country). For my trout fishing I go to Southern Germany, near the border with Austria. Many would say, what about the lake of Oostvoorne? Well, I've tried it several times, but lake fishing (and it's a HUGE lake!) is not my cup of tea. I prefer moving water over still water.

I used to go to the Eifel region, which is near the border of the three countries The Netherlands / Belgium / Germany. But after fishing these streams for more than 15 years, I wanted to go for quality rather than quantity. It's a long drive to southern Germany (around 9 hours, opposed to 3.5 hours to the Eifel region), but it's worth it. In southern Germany there are many other options to fish, including many nice rivers and streams in Austria.

So, this first weekend of June was sunny and hot. Not really the best weather for fishing, but being out in the gin clear water (click on the pictures) and fishing with my bamboo rods was nothing short of pure enjoyment. Too bad my buddy Rolf couldn't come along. Just a week before the planned weekend he pulled his calf muscle.

This weekend I decided to fish exclusively with my bamboo rods. I picked up the idea of fishing with bamboo rods after reading about them for many years. Dunno, but fishing a nice bamboo rod with a matching reel (no modern large arbor reels here please) on a small / medium sized stream has a very 'back to basic' feel to it. I always thought that a bamboo rod was just plain heavy and slow. Boy, how wrong I was. A well built bamboo rod, especially with understated cosmetics, is a thing of beauty. The attention and time that was put into building one, the workmanship that is needed and the material that was once just a 'piece of grass' is just amazing.

I now own two bamboo rods: a Tom Moran 7ft 2/2 (2/2 means 2 pieces with 2 tips) #4 and an Orvis Superfine 7ft 2/2 HDG (I use a #3 on it). This last rod is very special to me. First of all it was built in 1968, which is my year of birth. Second, I bought it from a gentleman who kept the rod all those years in the closet. He was too scared to break it if he fished it. He (RIP) passed away due to cancer. So I bought a brand new 36 year old bamboo rod. Since these Orvis rods all have serial numbers, I mailed Orvis and they could trace the buyer & year they built the rod without any problems!

Since it was the first time I took my Orvis out for fishing, I ended up fishing it 90% of the time. Although rated for a HDG line (similar to a 6 weight), I found it casts a 3 weight superbly. I always loved the Superfine grip on an Orvis, especially finished with two reel rings. 

My Orvis Tippet graphite rod has been my all time light weight rod for ages. This Orvis bamboo performed superbly during the weekend. One other myth: bamboo rods are NOT vulnerable as one might think. Abuse (e.g. sudden stress like jerking the rod after a fly caught a tree, hitting the tip with a bead head nymph or slamming car doors) is something no material will handle well. Playing a big fish with force EVENLY exerted is no problem for a bamboo rod. Check out some of the nice fish and the gin clear water of the Weisse Traun.