Trout Unlimited, Icicle Valley Chapter Auction Rod

A while back I was contacted to see if I would build a fly rod for the local chapter of Trout Unlimited and I said that I would.  It will be auctioned off at the annual benefit here in Leavenworth in a couple of weeks.  I looked over my rod blank collection and determined that a nice 8wt for the coming Wenatchee River steelhead season would be the right thing to do and I had one.  So the design started to come to my head.  With a flat black blank almost anything would work but I wanted something that would be classic and also pop with color so I selected gold trim on a black background.  I started with three colors of thread, gold, copper and bright gold flash.  I added eyes with gold inserts and a gold winding check and highlighted the rod with a collection of jungle cock feathers.  I turned a handle with nice cork and burl cork rings which gave the rod almost a hand grip like handle.
This is a medium/fast action Rainshadow 9 foot, 4 piece rod which makes it easy to pack should someone decide to take it somewhere to do some tropics fishing...  great small bonefish rod...

This is my friend Tim Opitz (CowboyT's) first trout on his new 2 wt that I built him.  He caught it at Box Creek near Box Canyon close to Easton Washington.  The rod is so light that he thought he had a snag at first and then he found out what it meant to catch a nice size stream trout on such a light rod.  Killer first fish T...