The Case of the "Stalker"

Recently Tom Anderson, a.k.a. "Duff" from the Fiberglass Flyrodders forum, purchased a vintage 6'6" three weight Winston "Stalker" that arrived with a bit of a mystery to it since the label on the fly rod said it was made in San Francisco while the original rod tube said it was made in Twin Bridges.  This all had Duff scratching his head but luckily Tom Morgan stepped in to clear up the case...and provided a history lesson along the way as well.

Tom Morgan wrote...  "First, it definitely is a Stalker from Montana designed by me. I designed all the Stalker rods when I was in San Francisco. Prior to buying Winston in 1973, Doug Merrick was making some 7 1/2' #4-weight rods but I thought they were rather stiff because they were on mandrels that were too big in diameter. There definitely were not any #3-weight rods. I developed the #3 & #4 Stalker rods based on a slightly slower taper mandrel that allowed for greater wall thickness and a greater latitude in making the lighter line size rods. We produced quite a few of these rods in San Francisco but the bulk of them were made after we moved to Montana. They all used Hexcel fiberglass fabric with colored phenolic resin that was essentially the same color in each batch. There may have been some very slight color variation but certainly not much. One thing that does happen over time is rod color will change by sun bleaching out the color. One thing you can see on this rod is just above the grip there are some light spots. These come from sanding too deep into the blank to remove the snakeskin finish caused by the cellophane tape during the curing process. The blank does seem to be lighter in this area than towards the tip but it could also be the lighting."

"We would sometimes make custom rods so that may be the reason it only says 6 1/2' #3 on it. We weren't always consistent at that time about what was written on the rods. The writing is mine.

When we first moved to Montana we didn't have any Montana rod decals so I still used the San Francisco ones for a while. I don't remember how long. We had the Montana tube labels made before we had the rod labels made. To my knowledge we always used the same thread color from when I purchased until we quit making fiberglass rods. We bought the thread in 1/4 pound spools and directly from Gudebrod in large amounts so all the thread came from the same dye lot. This particular rod would have been made a few years after moving to Montana because it has nickel silver fittings that I made in Montana. I had to order a substantial amount of nickel silver tubing which took a while to get. Then I machined the parts on a South Bend turret lathe and we buffed the parts in house. The hoods we punched out of tubing using a die I made in a hydraulic punch die unit made by Al Talbot."

"I don't know that I would agree with Jim Adams about the Claudio rod color although Jim may have seen some I haven't. Ferd and I were friends and I was very familiar with his rods. In fact, he gave me one. He had Fisher purchase special cloth that they rolled his blanks out of.  They were a very light brown color from the beginning.  It is possible that he had different fabric but all I ever saw were light ones.

The wrap color variation comes from the varnish or other coatings turning color over the years.  A good method of helping to determine how much the color has changed  is to remember the decals were ALWAYS silver."

To read the Winston "Stalker" thread in it's entirety check out the Fiberglass Flyrodders forum.