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Bolin, David

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David Bolin here.  From Searcy Arkansas.   I'm an accountant (CPA) by trade specializing in bank management.  I work for a (healthy) bank holding company in north central Arkansas.  These have not been the best of times to say the least.  But I'm thankful every day to have a job, a family to come home to, a rod shop to unwind in, and a river to wade.  I have too many hobbies.  Fishing, rod making, fishing, guitar, fishing, fly tying, fishing, blogging, fishing, etc...  But who's counting.  Now and then someone asks me how I can afford all the hobbies.  I just spend all my four wheeler, shotgun, rifle, ammunition, beef jerky, beer, and cigarette money on fishing related stuff at the flea market.  Whoever said fly fishing was a rich man's sport has never outfitted an Arkansas deer camp.  I've only bought one new fly rod in a store.  That was in my Dad's hardware store in 1980.  It's a Garcia 2638-A 7wt "dry fly action" with an automatic fly reel.  I upgraded to a used Daiwa LM-X F866U several years later for $50 and a Martin hardware store reel.  Started buying defective graphite blanks and building my own rods after that.  I've got a whole pile of home made graphite rods.

Then the bamboo bug struck.  A friend of mine (Matt West) fished his homemade bamboo rods on the Little Red.  I thought that was very cool.  But I didn't jump in the deep end of the pool until I met a bamboo rod making preacher at the Sowbug Roundup.  He said I could make my own forms and the guy in the next booth just happened to have Wayne's book.  I bought the book and made the forms.  Preachers always seem to make things sound much easier than they really are.  Making a set of steel forms falls in that category.  I haven't forgiven Harry for that yet, but I'm working on it.  So anyway, after making the forms, making rods is a walk in the park.  The rest of my story is well documented on the blog.