S4, Ep 127: STEELHEAD REDUX: All Things Steelhead Alley with Jeff Blood (Part Two)

Marvin Cash: Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, we return for part two of our interview with Steelhead Alley OG Jeff Blood. If you missed part one, the link is in the show notes. We pick up right where we left off with steelhead tactics and move on to discuss Jeff's new steelhead rods. I think you're really going to enjoy this one.

But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And as we continue to create and distribute more diverse content, you may want to consider downloading our iOS or Android app. We organize our content by category so you can go straight to the content that interests you the most. The apps are free and the links are in the show notes. Alternatively, just search The Articulate Fly where you get your mobile apps. Now onto the interview.

Yeah, no, so, I mean, it's interesting too. And I was wondering, you know, what you thought the biggest mistake most steelhead anglers make waiting in the water.

Jeff Blood: Okay, I watch. First of all, just because you own a pair of waders doesn't mean you need to use them. And so especially in these smaller streams, the fish want to lay as close as like 3 feet off the bank. And they want to try to most of the time when they're potting up and holding in a pool, they want to be comfortable. So you know, most life, food, love and shelter, right? So they're coming up for the love. We don't need to do anything about that. They need food and shelter, so they want to lay where they can be comfortable yet get some food, you know, come and buy them and so on and so forth.

And I watch people not stay feet dry, but walk right in. And all they're doing is pushing the fish that were laying right there into the pool, out into the current. And you know, you can cut when I say out on the current, out into the faster current where they don't really want to be. And I would say stand back. And then when they cast, if they have a 10-foot rod, the rest of the fish are underneath their rod. And so they're not fishing to them.

And on Elk Creek, in Erie county especially, I mean, I'll look downstream and say, well, they're not fishing to the fish. Sometimes the ledges are also caused by, or the ledge is the cause of the softer water. Does that make sense? And so they're laying along the ledge which they wade into and scare them out of, and that's where they want to be. So that would be the first thing.

The other thing that I think fishermen don't do is they don't put enough weight on. I mean, if I was going to change any variable first, I would change weight and, you know, I would make sure I'm rigged correctly. But once you're rigged correctly, if you're not catching them, you're either in the wrong spot or you're just not getting down to them.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. It's always interesting to try to give people that nymphing advice and ask them what they think their indicator should be doing so that they know that they're down.

Jeff Blood: Right, right, right. Yeah.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. It's always interesting, right, Because I think, you know, you talk to people and, you know, it always amazes me how few people understand that the water at the bottom is slower than the water at the top. So if the indicator is not moving, you know, at or slightly slower than the current speed at the top, you're probably not down.

Jeff Blood: Well, that's true. And I'm contemplating. I'd like to do a couple of videos for YouTube. I'm trying to figure out how to do it so that they will be meaningful to people when they watch them. But, you know, I'll throw an example out. My brother, two years older than me. I mean, he fished all his life, but he was a hunter when steelhead was in its day. Back then, he was hunting, I was fishing. And now he's, you know, seeing the light and he's trying to fish.

And we fished together, two and a half weeks ago when I was up there fishing, and I'm watching him cast, and his leader is bouncing upstream. Okay. So a fly is hitting above the split shot or just below that. His indicators below that. And the supply line hits water. There's instantly an arc in the line. So in reality, what's going on if you don't mend? Okay. And every time you mend, you move whatever's underneath. Unless you have a good touch. Most people don't. And so it's creating instant drag.

And because he said to me, he said, you know, why are you catching? Way more efficient and catching. I said, well, I'm fishing differently. And, you know, he said, what do you mean? I said, well, watch where your leader hits. Now, the reason that his leader is going upstream is one of two things. Either he's got something out of balance where the connection is. And flip palette just did a thing with Mad River Outfitters where they're talking about cutting a loop out and whatever and what that does to the leader in the cast. And there's a little bit of truth in what they're saying, but in reality, it's mostly the casting stroke.

So if I bring the rod back close to me, and then on my back has. Bring my arc to the outside of me, and I'm coming kind of like I want to throw a curveball, you know what I'm talking about? And I cast forward. My leaders can automatically go upstream because of momentum. What you want to do is bring it the other way, bring it outside, and then bring it past the ear, straight out. And it's just a simple adjustment. And let me say that again, bring it outside and bring it past your ear. You know what I'm saying, Marvin? It's mechanics. If you understand the mechanic, your leader will fire straight out.

And then if you make a slight bend, you're not your leaders straight from it. You're throwing your leader upstream, allowing your fly to tuck down in. And then as it floats down, it'll straighten out. And that's when you get your detection because you had to get down first. And so, you know, it's all those little adjustments. And I'm trying to, other things that I do is I list a lot of. I fish a big indicator. Why do you fish such a big indicator? And now the indicator I fish is in line. As opposed to a thing of a barber or one of those that's kind of floppy. And there's nothing wrong with those indicators. I just don't like them in steelhead fishing, okay? And a lot of guys fishing, and they fish very successfully. It's just not for me.

I like the inline indicator because one, it's balanced and I don't get any flop in the wind or, you know, I don't get any of that stuff. And now that big indicator also allows me to pick my flyline off the water between me and the indicator, especially in these small streams. So, you know, you're only fishing 10 to 20 feet away from you. And, you know, so you're kind of like not high stick in the sense of your cut. You're feeling the bottom, but you're bringing it up to the indicator, and you're taking all that play out of the line to get that natural straight drag-free drift.

And, you know, I've shown that to, two young guys. When I say young, they're men in their mid-30s. But, you know, they're enthusiastic and trying to learn. And they showed up, and we were fishing on the Grand River, and, you know, I was catching some fish. They weren't. I watched them fish mechanically. They were pretty good. They could cast, knew how to wade. You know, they'd done some fishing. They just needed a little bit of refinement.

And that little bit of refinement was in their leader, their weight, and then how they made the drift. And one of the guys went from catching, I don't know, three or four fish a day. The last time I fished with him, he took the hook out of over 30, and he's doing it every time now. Now, one of the guys that I also fish would just move to Florida. He was catching more fish than that, but I think, great. I fished with him one day where I know I saw him hook over 50. I don't know how many landed, and that was in about three hours.

So, you know, we lose a lot of them because of where we're at and the size of the fish. But, you know, and that's just because of refinement, and it's not that much. Sometimes it's just a little bit.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. It's interesting, too, because when you talk about that, using those larger indicators that are in line, it also helps you not pull your rig off the bottom, because it gives you a little bit of a greater margin for error when you mend. So that you don't. You're not inadvertently pulling your rig 3 or 4 inches off the bottom every time you mend it.

Jeff Blood: Absolutely, absolutely. But. So, you know, Phil makes those balsa indicators. They're really good. And then the ones I'm fishing, which I'm getting low on, by the way, are the ones from Frog Hair. And I use the. There's two types. One of them, you know, it's one and done. So when you take it off your line, it's done.

Marvin Cash: Yep.

Jeff Blood: I use the reusable one ones. And, you know, even with that, though, I shouldn't say this. Once I rig my steelhead rod up, it's rigged up from when I rig it up until I tear it down in the spring. So.

Marvin Cash: Anyway, yeah, it's funny you say that. I've got both flavors of those Frog Hairs and then I've actually got probably three or four pouches of the small black and white prototype inline ones that are probably, I don't know, a third of an inch long.

Jeff Blood: Yeah, well, you know, we played around with a lot of that stuff way back and, you know, innovating the ideas and trying to come up with them. And we can talk about that later, I guess. But, yeah, you know, they really work well, at least for me.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so it's funny too, like, while we're talking about Frog Hair, you know, you were involved with them when I met you on Cattaraugus Creek, but you didn't start out in the fly fishing industry. And I was curious, you know, what you did before Frog Hair and how you made the transition.

Jeff Blood: Well, so I was real fortunate out of college to, I'll say, luck into a job. I never used my degree. I needed a job. Out of desperation, I beg this guy for a job. He finally, I begged him so much that I think he should, you know, shut him up. They gave me a job and I ended up in what was called the premium and incentive industry. So we, as a company, we structured promotions for various different corporate entities from consumer promotions and trade incentives and sales incentives and safety award programs for manufacturing and mines and all that kind of stuff.

And it was absolutely a tremendous and exciting job. And I learned a ton. So I called on the vice presidents and directors of sales or marketing for most major corporations. My client list was extensive. I did a lot of business with Apple. I did a lot with Xerox and Campbell Soup Company and H.J. Heinz and a lot of the big major banks, you know, Mellon bank and PNC bank and just on and on and on. And if you remember back in the day when they gave away toasters and all that kind of stuff in a bank, I actually was selling the toasters and all that stuff was given away to the person that actually had the sales force that called on banks.

And I had the good fortune of structuring a really huge promotion. That's one of the things I'm proudest of. Not because of the size, but because of the impact that it did to the entire distribution chain and for the communities. And it was called Apples for the Students down your way. I don't know where it ran. I think. Are there Piggly Wigglies in your area?

Marvin Cash: Yeah, there are Piggly Wigglies.

Jeff Blood: Yeah, I think Piggly Wiggly ran it. It was called Apples for the Students. And this was before there were computers in the classroom. And the community would collect cash register receipts, turn them into the school of their choice, and then aggregate the receipts. And for every hundred thousand dollars worth of receipts, they got a free computer for the class or for the school. And in a 12 year period, we shipped over a half a billion dollars worth of computers and another half a billion dollars worth of sporting goods and electronics and whatever. And it was just a tremendous promotion. And in the end I made a lot of money on it. So, you know, it was quite a career.

The other interesting thing is because I had this client list and they, these clients would have to tell me what their business problem was and all their issues. And I would watch how we would construct, working with a client, often the client, you would talk them through the process and they would come up with their own solution as you're talking to them. And we would solve it. And then, you know, I'd get up and go make another sales call down the road and see a similar business problem in a different type of business. But, you know, the problem was almost identical in how you solved it. So you pick up that technique and pull it down there and sell it to them.

Kind of like fishing. You learn a technique, you take it and redeploy it to a different river or whatever you're doing. And so, you know, over time you have 200 just good ideas because they all teach you something you learn from others. Same thing with guides, you know, every guide, not every guide, but a lot of the guides would teach me some little simple trick like, you know, how to tie and approve clinch knot and put it on the bend of your hook if there's such a simple way to do that. And I was taught that by Brad Downey on the Bighorn River.

And it's like, oh my goodness. Because if you actually try to tie it by twisting it, you know, six times around and do all that on the bend of the hook, it takes you forever to do it because the wind's blowing, it comes off, and where there's another way that's so fast, you know, it's like five seconds or six seconds. But the point is that they all taught me these little tricks. And all of a sudden, you know, because I fished around the world, I've got 200 tricks that most people don't have. They're not mine. I mean, I was taught them, but they're mine in the sense I now have use, and, you know, it just makes you a better fisherman. Anyway, that's what I did in business.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so, you know, we'll talk about Jeff Blood Fly Fishing. You know, you were at Frog Hair and then kind of between there and Jeff Blood Fly Fishing, you were with Mystic Rods and Net Staff. You want to tell folks a little bit about that part of your journey?

Jeff Blood: Yeah. So two things. In 1998, when I was running my sales promotion agency, a Green Grass Golf pro came into my office. And I knew him, you know, we were friends. And he had been terminated from his position. And he took a job with Gamma Technologies, which is the manufacturer of most of the tennis racket string that people use today. And what Gamma was doing was irradiating the cores of golf balls with gamma rays. And the founder, Dr. Harry Ferrari, worked for Westinghouse Nuclear Fuels Division. And his job was to study the effects of gamma radiation on all of the materials within a reactor vessel, basically to understand maintenance and maintenance schedules.

And in doing so, he found out that he could alter the attributes of gamma with a process of radiation. And what it's basically doing is breaking down the long chain molecule and cross linking it. And, you know, he could bring certain attributes out of it. Well, he ended up deploying that in the manufacture of tennis racket strings in nylon and was able to replicate the attributes of natural cat gut, which is very expensive with nylon at about a tenth the price. And hence built this business, which is still there and thriving today, as far as I know.

And so when this guy walked into my office, Bob, he wanted me to look at their marking on their golf balls. And I looked at it and it was a mess. Okay. And I kept asking about this tennis racket spring, and I said, isn't it fishing line? And long story short, Easter? Well, it is. And I said, why aren't they making fishing line and if they can make it better? I don't know. I said, we'll find out. He set an appointment up for me and I went down and met with him and we talked about it and said, we can improve it. What do you want it to do? And I told him what I thought tippet material should do to improve it.

And I gave him, I'd gone over to the fly fishing store here in Pittsburgh called International Angler, which I was an owner of at one time, and gave a bunch of samples. And for me, they convinced me right out of the gate. I mean, it was. They made it better. I won't say the brands that we use, but they were all the brands that they sold. And we then talked and struck a deal. And I said, I can help you get into the fishing market. And we did. And we built Frog Hair Tippet Leader material, or. Yeah, Frog Hair Tippet Leader material first. And then we went into the conventional tackle side. We were very successful at it.

And then, I don't know, someone in management decided that it was time to get rid of Jeff Blood because they didn't need his expertise anymore. And we had a contract dispute. I left, and they basically crashed and burned. And then, you know, a year and a half later, took it and sold it off to a new guy. Dale Black, super guy. He bought it. He's a bass fisherman. He bought it for the conventional side. You know, they work the Frog Hair side, but not very aggressively. And it's still in some places, but it's great material as long as they're irradiating that product. And I don't know if they still are or aren't they irradiate under the formula, it's a superior product.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. Very neat. And so from Frog Hair, I know you did some work with Mystic Rods, because I can remember, I think we were talking a couple calls back. I can remember that was kind of part of the episode you did with The New Fly Fisher. You want to tell folks a little bit about that?

Jeff Blood: Yeah. So, you know, I was at the Somerset, New Jersey show, which is now Edison, New Jersey, quite a few years ago, calling me Q. And from The New Fly Fisher. We had done a couple TV programs on steelhead. And he walked me over to this booth, he said, hey, I think you ought to talk to this guy by the name of Dennis Klein. And Dennis was one of the founders of Mystic. There were two partners at time. And, yeah, we chatted for a few minutes. That was in January. And he said, boy, I really would like to fish with you. And I said, well, okay.

Long story short, they came in March, he and his partner, and, you know, we're gearing up and whatever, and he pulls a rod out and hands it to me and said, you know, I'd like you to fish this rod. I think you're going to find it the best rod you've ever fished. You know, I've kind of heard all that before. Everybody thinks their rod's the best. And, you know, everybody thinks they're reel's the best and you know what I'm saying? And some of them are really good and some of them, they're all the same.

So I rigged the rod up and I'd go down to the stream. And that year in February, we were on the east branch of Conneaut Creek and it was just chuck full of fish everywhere. And, you know, so I make a couple casts and it was like effortless. You know, you got two big split shot on there, you know, big indicator, a couple of flies and it's like boom. It just, I mean bang. It was right there and it was like wow. I mean it almost like startled me. I won't say the brand that I was fishing, but it was a high end brand prior to that.

And, okay, I'm, you got my attention here. And then I have to mend the line obviously as I'm fishing. And it just reacted really fast and that can be critical. Marvin. You know this, that if you can get your mend in real quick, you just get a longer, better drift. And so it was very responsive. And then the thing that really got me was when I finally hooked fish, there's a lot of, you know, dead falls and stuff in the stream and whatever and sometimes you gotta, you know, like lean on the fish and you, you know, when you're fishing 3X tippet and you got an 8-pound fish on, you can't do too much but you got to do enough. And it's kind of a refinement. It was like, wow, you know, this rod is really doing a great job.

So I was impressed. We went to dinner that night and we were talking and I said, yeah, I'm pretty impressed with it. I said, what's it sell for? He said, $400. And at the time the high end rods were selling for, you know, 6 and 700 bucks. And I said, well, how come that price? Is it inferior some way? He goes, no. He said we're better in every way than all the rods. And I said well, why would you do that? And basically it's a mistake that a lot of startups do is they think they're going to get into the market based on price and what they're really doing themselves. Often, okay, there's nothing's ever exact but is they were creating a perception that they can't be as good as another rod because they're not selling at the same price.

So Dennis came back to me a little bit later, he said, well, you know, you got a lot of marketing experience. Would you be willing to help me? And we, you know, I discounted what I normally would do and was just wanted to try to help him. And, you know, I got some free rods out of it, and I was happy. And we did this comparison. I said, well, Dennis, I need to understand what your rod is really all about.

So we took three other brands. I won't say who they are because I'm not into ditching anybody. You know, there's lots of good companies out there, but we took these three other brands and we did a comparison from the bottom of the rod all the way through every component, through the material, through the weight of the rod, so on and so forth. And in every category, he was equal to or better with components and materials and so on and so forth. And what really made his rod different was the mandrel that it was rolled on, which results in the taper. And the taper really, you know, once you eliminate, when I say differences in material, all that kind of stuff, and say everything's made out of the same thing, same tender loving care, so on and so forth, the taper is going to change the performance of the rod. And that's really what was important there.

So, I said, well, Dennis, I don't know what to tell you other than, you know, I think you should put together a little marketing campaign that says dare to compare. It would be like doing the old Pepsi Coke taste test. Okay. Now I need to put a little caveat in here. I did lots of what I'll call placebo testing in my career, right? And what people think and why they think it. And often, you know, like, with tippet material, I'd give them. I'd give somebody a control spool, drone, something, and they would, you know, give me an answer about it. Then I'd say, well, let me give you another one. And I'd give them another control spool with a different number, which is the same product, and they'd give me a totally different answer. And that's just how that kind of works. You're trying to understand how people think and whatever.

But back to Mystic, you know, Dennis, he did a lot of. He's very smart guy. He did a lot of his own things, right? He's very likable, worked hard, you know, traveled out west selling his rods, you know, doing the things that you need to do to be successful and build a very successful business, and then turned around and sold it. I don't know for how much money, but it was life changing for Dennis. And that's where I got and learned about rods and made some context, you know, on bringing in my own rod. So.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. Interesting. And so, you know, I know before you got to Jeff Blood Fly Fishing, you. I think you actually kind of developed Net Staff. You want to talk about that a little bit more before we kind of dive into the rods that you're making now?

Jeff Blood: Yeah. So I wish I could do that one over again on that staff. Friend of mine. Well, let me back up. So, you know, as you start to age, you know, I used to jump off the bank, plow into the water, wade across any riffle I wanted to in my youth, and, you know, no problem. As you age, you're just not as stable. I have to kind of like calculate how I'm going to get off the bank now. And, you know, even when I was young and a good wader, there were times I wanted to carry wading staff. Well, why don't we? Because they're a pain in the neck. You got to pull them out, unfold them. You know, if you leave them out, they tangle in your flyline. If you don't put them away, you know, they're just causing problems. And then you got to fold them back up and put them back in. And that's kind of why we don't.

So I was trying to come up with a method where I could carry it with me, conquer a couple of different things, you know, have my net, where to carry it, so on and so forth. And I had made a prototype, and I had it with me, and I had it hooked in my back. And I took a hunting friend with me, a guy that I'd done some big game hunting with, fishing on the Ashtabula. And I was pushing a lot of water, and he kept saying, hey, can I use your net staff? Can I use your net staff to wade across? And then he'd hook a fish and, hey, can I use your net staff?

And when we got done, at the end of the day, I said, so, Carl, how many times did you ask the my net staff? He said, oh, man, 30 or 40. And I said, okay. He said, I think you got a product. He said, what's your drawback? I said, well, I don't have the resources right now, based on everything else that I'm doing, to develop it. So he came in and said, well, I'll help you do that. Okay. So we started down that path, and we did, and, you know, we're still friends today.

I ended up selling out to him because it just wasn't catching on like it needed to. And there wasn't enough revenue to, you know, to pay two people what we both need to be paid. And I just let him have it. Now, if I could redesign that, there's a couple things I would change. I would make it much lighter. We just overbuilt everything. And I would have a way of incorporating the net without it having a handle on the top and still wade if the handle in shallow water would get in the way of netting a fish. But, you know, he sold quite a few of them. And, you know, it was an interesting development, learning curve, and there's still a need for that type of product in the market.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I think it's, you know, talking about trying to be a smarter wader the older you get. I think if you kind of go through life and you kind of watch what's going on, it's interesting to kind of see how all of those successes and failures, and I think probably more of the failures than the successes, really kind of help to kind of, you know, inform what we do. And so, you know, here you are today at Jeff Blood Fly Fishing, and you're pulling that, you know, everything you learned. You know, a lifetime in fishing, but also kind of up close and personal with Mystic Rods. So tell us a little bit about your company.

Jeff Blood: Well, so what started this endeavor is there's a couple of fly patterns, and I'm going to kind of give you the history, as briefly as I can, that I fly fisherman, wrote an article about it. And, you know, people caught on with it and everything. And I'm online one day looking at it. You know, the Blood Dots being, like, tied and sold by all these fly tiers everywhere. I'm thinking, you know, that's my fly pattern. I'm not making a penny out of it. The same thing with what we call the White Death, White Zonker. You know, it was kind of my innovation, and I brought it to the market and shared it with people, and it just exploded because it catches fish. And, you know, the tiers are tying. And I don't begrudge any of them for doing that. I mean, they're in business and they're going to tie what's being demanded. And I finally said, you know, What? I'm going to go do it myself and. But I can't tie enough flies. I'm not going to tie flies to try to make a living because, you.

Marvin Cash: You know, you're older and wiser now. You know better than that.

Jeff Blood: Yeah, yeah. So I went out and did a lot of research and, you know, where to have them tied. And I know a lot of people in the industry, so I know, you know, the big players and so on and so forth, and found the company that I thought I could do it with and bring it in at the right price, where I can sell it to whole. To the wholesale trade and they can sell it and still, you know, sell it at a reasonable price and everybody can make money and I can sell it to the consumer.

Well, as I was doing that, I got a phone call from. I'm not going to mention names because I really don't want to, but I got a phone call about the ability to build some fly rods to my own specifications, the way I would like them built. And, you know, I started that conversation, had some prototypes built, brought them in, fished them, tweaked them a little bit, and did whatever, especially on the 7 and 8-weights for steelhead. And then looked at it, you know, what's my financial commitment? I'm 66. I don't necessarily need to work, but I don't know what I would do if I didn't work because I can't fish every day and I can't shut my brain down. So I just decided that I'm gonna, you know, import some fly rods.

You know, I know where. So part of my past career when I ran the sales promotion agency is we sold a lot of merchandise. We sold over $100 million worth of consumer products on an annual basis. And I've worked a lot with Syllabus Magnavox as an example, and they source product all over the world. And I understand, you know, the distribution model and supply chain and all the different things and quality of stuff and you know, what the issues were with importing, all that type of thing. So I had a lot of experience with that.

And I have a gentleman I work with in Korea who is, you know, if you know the Korean culture in general, they are perfectionists. They build high quality product. They're very efficient. China, not so much. I mean, China, you got to guard China like crazy. If you don't have someone watching after you, you get a really good sample. But when your shipment comes in, it could be a wreck. Not always. I mean, there's good product made in China too. But, you know, I negotiated with this person and said, look, I just need to assure myself and have the assurance from you that when this product comes to me that it is at the exact specifications that, you know, we've outlined in the performance.

And, you know, I'll make a comment about one of the wading shoe companies. Great company. You know, that stuff's all imported. They had an issue one year where the soles of the shoes were falling off, basically. Not all of them. But what happened is the factory ran out of waterproof glue, and they needed glue. So they'd go down the street and they just get glue and they glue on the bottoms. And when they come in, you're looking at them and say they look great. But now you're standing in the middle of the river and all of a sudden your bottom comes up because the factory changed the specification and nobody's watching after it.

So that's the first thing that I needed to do for myself, is to make sure I can make all those headaches go away. Because I hate creating work for anybody. I also hate creating disappointment with people. So once I knew that I had that locked in and I had prototyped and fished my products, I decided I'm going to go ahead and make the commitment. The commitment's pretty big. I mean, you got to bring in, you know, seven figures in product to start, and you can't sell anything without it. So you got to do that in advance of having any kind of relationship with any customers.

I mean, I know a lot of people, but, you know, you walk into a fly shop today and they've got, you know, four to 10 brands of fly rods. They need another brand of fly rod like a hole in the head. But at the same time, I had that same issue with Frog Hair tippet material when we first started out. And someone said to me back then, why do you want to build tippet material? I said, because I can build it better. And that's what I think I've done.

Now, you know, the issue is this, that you can't know something's better until you know it's better. And so there's a perception in everybody's mind that, you know, I only need to spend this amount or whatever. The thing of it is, you know, if you're spending 150 on a rod, probably the manufacturing cost of that slide, I'm just gonna throw a number up, 15 to 30 bucks. Actually it's 15 to build it, but by the time you add on all your expenses to get it over here and your tariffs and all the things you have to do, you know, it cost you a number where you've got to charge wholesale $75 in order to even make a $10 bill. And then they got to turn around and sell it for 150 bucks.

So when you look at a rod that we're selling, my rods are retailing for $600. What I would tell you is I would stand beside anybody steelhead fishing with my 7 and 8-weight, with any other high end brand and challenge them to out fish me with the rod or vice versa. I would let them use my rod and I would use their rod and say that those rods, you know, because I was in the Bighorn Trout shop just last week, I mean they've got a couple rods in there for eleven hundred dollars, just regular trout rod. And I'm looking at them and actually in saying, geez, I think these are made in the same factory my rods are made in because of what I'm looking at. Okay, I don't know that but. And what justifies the eleven hundred dollars?

And you know, I don't know if you remember the article way back, it was fly rods by the numbers. And this guy, I forget what his name was, he took 10, three columns of 10 words. And then you would pick any number, a combination of three and say 1, 2, 5 and 6. And he would just pull the word from there and it would be something like proprietary dynamic speed, you know, was the marketing term. And there's a lot of that out there. You know, the bottom line is what really makes the rod good and it comes down to in the performance. What does a rod need to do for you? Well, let's go into the physics of it. It's called potential energy.

And the reason why we have line weights. And if I put a, if I take a 5-weight and I pour, put a 4-weight on it, I don't, I can't flex the rod as much because there's not as much weight. And therefore I'm not going to generate as much because there's less flex. I won't get as much potential energy. If I put, let's say on a 5 way to put a 7-weight on, it's so much heavier that it over powers the rod and diminishes the potential energy. And kills it.

So, you know, that's really what's going on in the rod. And you want to use that potential energy for you. You don't want it to be your arm making the cast. You wanted the rod to be making a cast. And you know, those are kind of what I try to do in my rods. And I think I've done it, you know, with my close friends. I, as I was prototyping, they said, don't tell me what I want to hear, tell me what I need to hear. And when they all came back and say, hey, this is one hell of a great rod, I said, okay, is that really what you think? And you know, they say, yes, this is what we think.

And the only way for me to demonstrate that, you can't do it in a store. You know, people want to go in and do the wiggle test. And that's like, what's that tell you? Tells you nothing. And you go out and cast it on the grass. Yeah, it'll be a great overhand cast. But in steelhead fishing, you overhand cast less than half the time. You're roll casting or doing some other form of the cast. And this is where the rod actually shines in the spectacular in a chuck and duck situation.

Now I'll end it with this, but I also want an all around rod. So, you know, the guys over at my local fly shop, International Angler, are fortunate to have two, you know, nationally known Czech nymphing fishermen and that's Josh Miller and Joe Clark. And, you know, they're all about, you know, 2 and 3-weights because that's what they're doing at fishing. And they want me to build them. And I said, well I can, but I don't know what to build. I don't know how. Somebody's got to tell me why a rod is a good rod for Czech nymphing. And right now I just don't have the bandwidth to go discover all that. I'm going to when I have time. I said, but my. And I don't have a 3-weight.

I said, I have a 4-weight, 5-weight and 6-weight and 10-foot 3. I have a 7 and 8-weight in 10-foot 3 for steelhead and in bass and permit and whatever you want to go fish in saltwater. The reason that I have those rods is they are actually built for nymphing and indicator fishing on the Bighorn River, you know, on the San Juan, you know, the Green River. Any of those bigger bodies of water where you need power in order to actually control the line or to make the cast and, you know, to throw that weight. Yet I want it to be an all around rod. So if a dry fly hatch starts to come off, you can very quickly pop everything off and dry fly fish if you don't have another rod or another rod rigged up.

So I built those, and then the 9-foot 3s, they're just built to the traditional length. That is kind of embedded on everybody's brain is that, you know, they need the 9-foot rod. Just think about this, Marvin. You know, 20 to 25 years ago, the thought process was to have an 8 and a half foot rod. That's what everybody owns. And then they went to 9-foot and now they're going out to 10-foot. And, anyway, that's kind of my rod. I think it makes a difference. Again, you have to cast it to know.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so you've really kind of gone out and, you know, engineered the right rod for the right situation. Right. So you've got kind of your heavier chuck and duck rods and then your more versatile nymph rods that can do a little bit more, right?

Jeff Blood: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, let me throw something else up. I also owned a fly shop that allowed me to buy a lot of rods at cost or a lot of rods were given to me. Okay. And so I own a lot of fly rods. I've cast a lot of fly rods. Now, I'm going to be fair to all the other rod companies. Not recently, not in the last four or five years. Okay. But I have a broad spectrum of experience with various different rods.

I own at least one rod from all. More than that. I probably got three or four rods from every major rod manufacturer out there, if not more. And I don't own right now a bad fly rod. Okay. I just own some rods that are much better. So out of all these rods that I have, what's the one I continuously pick up? And why do I do that? Because it's just better. And that's why I picked them up. And it's a better tool for the application.

So, you know, if I'm going into some little tight brook trout stream. Well, you know, there's a controversy there too. A lot of the rod gives you different capabilities in a shorter rod. Okay. But most people want to fish a short rod. You know, I might grab a short rod just to fish it because I haven't done it a long time. But the. So, you know, when you go into some of these fly shops and you got a clerk, and I don't want to diminish anybody that's, you know, making 30 or $40,000 a year, how many fly rods have they actually gone and fished? And that's where, you know, the rubber meets the pavement. Right there is, have you fished the rod? And if you fished it, then I think you have the right to critique it and say, hey, it does this well and doesn't do that well, or, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then also the right to compare it against another rod.

It's just, we can't do that. We can't drive every car out there in the world. And, you know, we've owned a lot of cars. And you have a good experience with it. You know, you kind of stick with it until you experience something better. And it's like, oh, my gosh, you know, I wish I'd had this three years ago.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well, and I would say, too, right? I mean, in general, you know, I think as fly shops have become, it's become harder and harder to be profitable and have a fly shop. I think there are fewer and fewer shops that stock a lot of different rods. Right. So that makes it hard. But I think too, I mean, you know, listening to you talk about it. The other thing is, you know, the conversation you have with someone who's buying their first 9-foot 5-weight is very, very different from someone that owns three or four of them.

Jeff Blood: Right, exactly. Right, exactly.

Marvin Cash: You know, it's kind of like going in the golf pro shop and it's like, wow, why do I need a wedge kit? Right?

Jeff Blood: It's like, well, well, it is that. And you know, and then it depends on life stage and socioeconomics. And, you know, when you have a lot of money, you can buy a lot of things and when you don't have so much and, you know, I mean, I was at that life stage with three kids and braces and mountain bikes and hockey skates and, you know, so another fly rod was kind of an ouch to my wife, other than I bought them at a discount because I worked or I owned the fly shop. That's kind of the reason why I bought it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well, at least you didn't have a kid that had a horse habit, because that could have been super expensive.

Jeff Blood: I do have one with a horse.

Marvin Cash: Oh, gee whiz. What do you know? I'm shocked. I see you out on the water.

Jeff Blood: She's now 35, and she's a veterinarian, and she has her own horse and pays for her own horse.

Marvin Cash: So you can buy more rods now.

Jeff Blood: Exactly. I do have to tell this story real quick. My oldest son came to me about two years ago, said, dad, I want to buy a boat. What do you think? And I said, well, I think it's a bad financial investment, but you want a boat, go buy one. Okay? And like, two weeks later, my daughter comes in, she goes, dad, I'm thinking about buying a horse. What are you thinking? I said the same thing. I said, well, it's a bad investment, but you want one, go buy it.

And then she's out riding around the stable, you know, English style. And my son came over and he's watching her ride around, and she got off the horse and walked up the fence and said to my son said, so, Lauren, is that all you do is ride in a circle? And she goes, yeah, it's kind of like boating, you know? And it's all what you get pleasure out of in life, you know, I mean, you can't take the money with you. You need to invest wisely and plan for living a long life, but at the same time, you know, live every day.

And when I look at a couple things before we cut here, Marvin, is that to me, you're making an investment in a lifetime product. My warranty is what I call a limited lifetime, no fault warranty. The limited part is that I reserve the right, and it's totally at my discretion to not warrant any rod that I think there was intentional abuse to. Because there are some people that do that. I did a lot of investigation and talking with people, you know, what's going on, that that won't be, you know, 1% of the people who buy a rod.

And then it's a lifetime, no fault warranty. You slam it in the car door without doing it intentionally. And happens. And so you take a picture of the break. You give me a simple explanation what you did, and send me an email with the picture and the explanation what you did. You also take a picture of the number that's on each blank, which tells me which rod it is. Okay? And then the number of segment starting at the bottom. 1, 2, 3, 4. And I send you back with a code that you go on line that puts you into a special part of my site that no one can look at unless you're doing a warranty claim and it's $50 and I replace it.

And I don't make any money at that. None of the manufacturers are all kind of make any money at that. But it is just a way to say thank you for the business and we understand stuff happens and we can do this and not lose money. And, you know, back in my day when we first started, there were no warranties until Orvis started that. And if you broke a $300 rod, you were just out and you were going to break it. If you fish enough, you will break the rod. What is going to happen?

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. And so I know that people can purchase your rods through your site, but, you know, where else can folks find your rods?

Jeff Blood: Yeah. So, you know, because of COVID I really didn't travel much, but I've got good penetration. So right here locally in Pittsburgh, it's that International Angler fly shop. It's at Neshannock Creek Fly Shop. It's in the new concept stores of Dick's sporting goods called Public Lands. You'll be seeing more of those throughout the nation shortly. And then it's in Fish USA, which is a big online retailer. A store called Tudor Hook and Nook. They're in of servicing the steelhead fishing. It's in Conneaut Creek Fly and Float, and did I mention Indiana Angler.

Marvin Cash: Now you have.

Jeff Blood: Yeah, Indiana Angler, which I'm doing. I'm doing a presentation there tomorrow night on steelhead and hopefully soon to be in about 10 other ones. So I reached out to some people. I also talked to a lot of the people when I was in Montana fishing, and I got some bites there, but I haven't consummated the deals yet. So I'll be putting together. Unfortunately, I was waiting to go to the fly tackle dealer show where I could, you know, meet with two or three hundred dealers or whatever number was going to be there, and then also attempt to hire manufacturers reps. That's how you really build this distribution is you've got to get manufacturers reps that call on the various stores.

And then obviously I'm selling it online. And I encourage you, if you have a dealer that is one of those that I mentioned that you give them the business. Because if we don't take care of the dealer, we won't have them. And if you don't have a dealer, then I'd be happy to do it online. And it's basically jeffbloodflyfishing.com and, you know, I've got a e-commerce engine there that you can review the rods and also my flies are on there and make a purchase.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we were talking about how important it is to get the rods in people's hands and you know, obviously things are still a little bit iffy with the Delta variant of COVID. But you know, are you planning to hit the consumer show circuit this winter?

Jeff Blood: Well, I'm planning on it. I had COVID myself about five weeks ago. So I do have a little bit of natural immunity and you know, looking at doing all the things necessary to attend those shows. I had talked to Ben Furimsky who runs the fly fishing shows and, you know, I'm good friends with he and his father. So you know, I plan on doing all those shows and hopefully people, if they go to the shows, will come by and see me and we go to the casting pond and you know, try the rods and have a discussion about them.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. And I know you gave people the URL for Jeff Blood Fly Fishing and I'll drop that in the show notes. But Jeff, do you have any preferred flavors of social media ice cream you want to share with folks so they can kind of follow the company and follow what you're doing on the water?

Jeff Blood: Yeah, well, I have, you know, a Facebook page and again it's Facebook at Jeff Blood Fly Fishing and then an Instagram account. I also do have a YouTube channel that I started. I only posted a few videos to that I'm going to be doing this fall. Some, you know, how to things, you know how to rig for steelhead, you know, some of those drift, you know, how to make the drift in certain conditions and why and all that type of thing and maybe take it to a higher level.

The issue there is I'm trying to look at how I go about doing the video so that you can actually see what's going on in the drift. And I'm working on that. I've got a couple of pretty high end marketing people that are working with me on that. So currently that's what I have right now. You know, I've got a pretty good following. I've done nothing to try to boost anything yet. And you know, I'm a little behind the time. I'm a good marketer but I'm a traditional marketer so I got to get into the social stuff a little better.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well it's a, yeah it's a, I don't know, it's a yin and a yang thing for sure. I have a love hate relationship with it. But I will drop all of those links in the show notes. Jeff and I really appreciate you carving out a little bit of time to chat with me this evening.

Jeff Blood: Marvin, as always good chatting with you and this fall is going to be epic. So get up here.

Marvin Cash: I'll work on it and you know hopefully I'll see you on the water before I see you to show.

Jeff Blood: Okay, let's do that. So have a good evening.

Marvin Cash: You too. Take care. Well folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you again. If you like the podcast please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. Tight lines everybody.