Background
Ron Scott began fly fishing in 1967 and, built his first fly rod in 1975. He worked his way through college working along side his grandfather, an old school master, doing finish carpentry. After college he took on the challenge of completely renovating a 200 year old house in central Massachusetts. There, he completed every aspect of the renovation, from making furniture and custom cabinets, hand forging hinges, door latches and cabinet hardware, to milling crown moldings and wood paneling.
Once the renovation of this home was complete, he took up gunsmithing and competitive bench rest shooting. Then in 1987, after reading about Lee Wulff’s accomplishments, Ron Scott built my first bamboo fly rod – a 6’ ultralight rod – and used it to catch many Atlantic salmon.
Today, he continue to makes bamboo rods from scratch – from hand splitting the seasoned cane, to planing the strips down, to adding the highest quality components. Craftsmanship and detail is most important, and hopefully evident in each Ron Scott Fly Rod. And in order to serve customers who want even finer embellishments and decoration on the rod, he has teamed up with a highly-respected goldsmith and life long friend, Lisa Svedberg. Together through the Svenska™ line of fly rods, they can create the finest casting heirloom quality fly rod money can buy.
A fly rod, first and foremost, most cast extremely well. It must be designed and built to the highest order, without compromise. In order for a fly rod to cast that well it needs to be custom built for the specific requirements of the fisherman and the type of fishing he/she will be doing. Then and only then should the rod be embellished visually to honor it and make it a personal extension of yourself.
Qualifications
After building many graphite and bamboo fly rods from blanks, Ron studied the art of split bamboo fly rod making under 2 master makers with over 30 years of rod making experience. Every split bamboo rod he makes starts out as a raw culm, which is painstakingly split and planed by hand. He makes both hex and penta rods – which can be impregnated or varnished. All of the tapers are his own design and incorporate a proprietary “elliptical” pattern that results in a very powerful, yet sensitive rod. This unique trademarked taper design – the Spitfire Taper™ – has received registration with the USTPO (U.S. Trademark SN 97186797: SPITFIRE TAPER). Read more about the Spitfire Taper here.
Philosophy, Catch and Release, Sustainability
In 1938 Lee Wulff noted in his famous quote: “Gamefish are too valuable to be caught only once.” He was way ahead of his time. Today fly fishing has become very popular and many streams are overfished. It is more important than ever that we, as fishermen, learn the proper way to catch and release fish.
I believe that “fair fight,” means to catch a fish and play it in an ethical manner. An ethical manner is a means of fishing with respect towards the fish and the environment. There is an old saying about the three stages that a fisherman goes through. The first stage is when you catch as many fish as possible – everything is about how many the quantity of fish. The second stage is when the fisherman goes after the biggest fish – the trophy fish. Today that means a very cool picture of the fisherman holding a large fish out of the water on social media. The third and final stage that some fishermen reach is when the experience of fishing is more important than how many or how big the fish are that he catches. This is the stage that is best exemplified by the custom bamboo fly rod. Bamboo fly rods represent the highest art in fly rod making and they provide the most challenging and enjoyable means of catching a worthy gamefish.
