Q&A with George Minculete

My Q&A's started as an idea to interview some of the memorable people I've met in fly fishing, both online as well as offline. Rather than a true interview I decided to keep it simple by asking a few Q&A's.

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Our next guest for the 2nd Q&A is the Romanian rod builder George Minculete of Tight Loop fly rods. I started exchanging emails with George late 2012 after I saw his website. I was especially impressed by George's ability to build very clean looking rods (color scheme, tight wrappings of the guides and epoxy work on the guide wraps). But what really struck me right away was his very well proportioned half wells aka Western grips. Yeah, I'm a 'grip junkie' as you know by now... 😀

My first rod built by George is still my number one 9ft #4 rod of all time on a new-old-stock G. Loomis IMX blank I owned. Fast forward almost 10 years and now I own several rods built by George and these are probably not the last.

So let's start with the Q&A!

1) Q: To how many countries have you shipped your rods to? What's the most unexpected destination?

"I can't say I've ever counted the countries I have shipped rods to, but I can say most of them went across Europe and the US, a few to Canada and a couple to Russia and Australia. The most unexpected destination was Taiwan, which was actually the only country in far Asia I've shipped a rod to. I would love to see some of my rods in Japan in the near future."

2) Q: Do you have any past or present rod builder(s) you got/get inspired?

"I have been most inspired by master rodmakers like Tom Morgan, Dave Lewis and Kerry Burkheimer. I also get inspiration from contemporary builders like Matt Leiderman, Mike McFarland and friends like Christian Hörgren, Callum, Chris, Nico, Shane and others."

3) Q: Custom built rods have always been a very small niche market. Do you see an increase of customs built rods? And if so what are the reasons?

"Can't say they represent a very small niche nowadays. There seems to be an emergence of custom rod builders especially with fiberglass rods, so there must be increased interest in the market.

I like to think people get more educated over the internet these days, especially when they see the fine examples of beautiful fly rods coming out from small, artisan rod shops. I think this contributes to more and more people wanting to own a great quality handcrafted fly rod at some point, that is truly what they are looking for."

4) Q: What kind of rods are the most requested and what are your favourite type of rods to build?

"I'm a trout fisherman and I love to build trout rods, so these are most requested, but occasionally I challenge myself on building bigger rods, like double handers or some heavier weight glass rods."

5) Q: Do you have memorable builds and if so name two?

"Oh I have many memorable builds. To name two of them...let me see....I can think of personal and first Steffen Brothers fiberglass rod I built many years ago, it was a 7'3" 2/3wt. 2pc. that I regrettably sold. It was my first contact with the more modern fiberglass world. Then, on the graphite side, I can think of a Sage TXL ultralight that I so much enjoy using anywhere on my home waters."

6) Q: I've seen degradation of quality (materials used and finish) of rods by high end rod manufacturers the past 15 years or so. Is this due to higher prices of rod building materials (cork, quality reel seats, etc.) or do fly fishermen these days see their fly rods more like a commodity and care less about build quality?

"Great quality cork seems to become more difficult to find, and at large scale production I can imagine is even harder to produce quality cork handles and finishes.

I believe some of the major rod manufacturers are still trying to produce good quality fly rods. We live in the golden age or fly rods, so we have to be thankful of all the R&D the big rod companies do, for new composite materials and new rod designs, that we have more access to today. On the other side, competition can be a good and a bad thing sometimes. Consumerism is a bad thing that unfortunately reached flyfishing too, therefore we've seen high end rods that are horribly finished and ugly looking."

7) Q: What kind of fishing or destination are in your top three bucket list?

"I think Mongolia is one big dream of mine to fish, then probably the Yellowstone-Glacier parks in western US and lastly New Zealand."

8) Q: Are you going to do own propriety designed blanks in the future?

"I'm not sure. With all the great blank offerings that are available to custom rod builders today, glass or graphite, it's hard to say. I might want to try making some special ultralight-light line rods, with spigot ferrules and fine tips and deep loading actions at some point. For now, I'm mainly focused of building the best blanks out there and build them to perfection."

Thank you George!

My other Q&A's:
1) Q&A with Chris Barclay
2) Q&A with George Minculete

3) Q&A with Edoardo Scapin

4) Q&A with Hoagy Carmichael

5) Q&A with Jorge Trucco

6) Q&A with Per Brandin

7) Q&A with Jack Dennis

8) Q&A with Charles Jardine

9) Q&A with Christopher Rownes

10) Q&A with Leon Hanson

11) Q&A with Joe Messinger Jr.

12) Q&A with Mike Valla

13) Q&A with Larry Kenney