One summer, I was fly fishing from a boat on Lake Ferndale in East Texas. Somehow, the butt of my fly rod got wedged between my boat seat and the boat. The rod snapped right above the cork handle. There I was in the boat in the middle of the lake without a spare rod. I not only broke the rod but I broke my own number one rule. “Always carry a spare rod”. I was certainly disappointed but was not going to stop fishing. So, I took the real off of the seat, threw the butt section of the rod in the bottom of the boat and kept on fishing. I laid the reel at my feet and coiled up some line beside it. I held the broken rod by the base section. I could cast and strip just fine without ever needing my reel. I fished all day like that and caught plenty fish.

On another summer day, while fishing deep in the San Juan National Forest in Colorado, I broke my rod tip. I had gotten my fly hung near the top of a small tree. I pulled my fly line and bent the tree over so that I could reach the fly. It was working just fine. Buy the time I pulled the tree over enough to reach the fly; I had gotten enough slack in my line so that the rod was now lying down flat on the rocks. Well, I stepped on it. The rod broke just bellow the tiptop. Obviously I did not carry a spare rod. It was a little too inconvenient to pack a spare rod into where I was. You know you just can’t cast a rod with the tip missing. So what was I to do? I broke the rest of the tip section off so that it was flush with the first snake guide. I bent and reshaped the snake guide as best as I could so that the tip would be as smooth for casting as I could possible get it. It was not the perfect fix but it worked well enough for me to finish the day fishing.