Rollin' It Old School: Eric Sharp

This article in the News Tribune tells of how one angler gets his inspiration from Izaak Walton's "The Compleat Angler."

Like him, I use a rod over 15 feet long. But whereas his was made from various woods available in England in the mid-1600s, and probably weighed a pound or more, the one I use now is a telescoping, 19-foot carbon fiber "whip" from Italy that weighs six ounces.

Lacking his knotted horsehair line (although I did make and fish one in North Carolina 20 years ago), I tied 10 feet from the tapered tip section of an old No. 5 fly line to the rod tip, with an 10-foot monofilament leader. My 5X monofilament tippet was probably equivalent in strength to the two or three hairs from a horse's tail used by Walton and his protege, Charles Cotton (who really wrote the fly fishing sections of "The Compleat Angler").