From: Stephen Boshoff
Sent: Sep 9, 2004 7:30 AM
To: adam
Subject: 0-weight grip design

Hi Adam - hope this is your e-mail address. I am a small stream man from Cape Town, South Africa. I fish with Ed Herbst, Tom Sutcliffe and a few others in our mountain freestone streams and build a rod now and again when I have the time. Earlier today I e-mailed Gerard about the 00-weight; asking whether he knows anything about it. Ed is distressed - he just bought a new SLT 0-weight blank when I broke the news on what is shown on flyanglersonline.

To cut a long story short, Gerard referred me to the 00-weight thread on smallstreams.com; from where I found your zero-weight thread. That brings me to the real purpose of the mail: I attach two photos of a 0-weight grip I built for Ed before. It is based on Borger's ideas in Presentation, moving the hand over the reel as far as possible. It works, is comfortable and effectively increases useable rod length. It works best for those of us who casts with the "finger on top". Very, very painstaking to make, but it works. If you are interested, I'll sketch the steps for making it and send that to you.

Best regards,

Stephen Boshoff

This is the e-mail, I'm hoping Stephen contacts me, I have some ideas for him.

Below is two images that are the earliest center-axis project that I can find. Notice the lack of a winding handle, you stuck a finger in the hole. Photographer unknown.

I enjoy your enthusiasm Stephen.