Great show!!!!!!!!! Tom,

I had a great time and was very impressed with your organization. The evening gathering was a great sucess too. Thanks to all the sponsors.

I left the show with a boat load of stuff and I am energized to attack all of my new projects and plans.

The show will continue to grow.

This may be selfish, but since I fly fish, keep the association with the fly fishing show. It works great.

Kudos Tom,

BOB

Thank you for the kind comments. I don't have an organization, it's just me and my lonesome. But I must give a great deal of credit to the outstanding seminar team that I think put on the best educational presentations the rod building craft has yet seen anywhere. I also have to give credit to Barry Serviente of The Fly Fishing Show for providing a venue for us to do this in. Having a first class exhibit hall that doesn't cost us anything only makes it easier to do something like this.

You are correct - the show will continue to grow and it will continue to get better and better and better. Count on it.

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I've heard people rave about all the products there and the great prices, but almost no one has mentioned what I personally thought was the backbone and best part of the show........... THE ROD BUILDING SEMINARS!!!!! Maybe most people didn't attend them. I guess they didn't, but I went to all that I could. Being able to see all these techniques presented up close and personal by the very best rod builders in the world is why I went in the first place. The low prices on tons of products was just icing on the cake for me.

Ralph O'Quinn is a show unto himself. One of the most knowledgeble people in all of rod building. I'm glad I got to meet him and see his fascinating demos on repair and making multi-piece rods. It takes a lot of nerve to take a perfectly good high end blank and cut it up into pieces. But he put it right back together good as new but in multi-piece design. Andy Dear is to be commended for his lathe instruction. Being able to see turning in person makes it a lot easier. Jim Upton and Mark Crouse boggled my mind with thread work. I might have to do more of this now that I know more about how to do it. Tom your flocking demo cleared up some fine points I had missed in the article and your seminar on creative thinking in rod design showed me just how much I'm overlooking when building a rod.

These and the rest of the seminars were just the backbone of the show for me. I just wish they didn't run 2 and 3 at the same time so I could attend more of them. Ever thought about starting the show on Friday and running the seminars one at a time?? Just a suggestion. The show was still great any way you cut it!

At the 2004 event we only ran one seminar at a time. That does allow you to attend them all, if you wish, but it doesn't allow us to do more than about 10 or 12 over the two day event.

At the 2005 event we ran 25 seminars and demonstrations. I know that they ran concurrently which precluded you and others from seeing them all, but it was the only way we could get in this many in the time allowed.

I plan to have at least that many, if not more, at the 2006 event. I will again attempt to schedule them so that similar ones don't run on top of each other. There is some tweaking to do and lessons to be learned and I'll try to arrange the schedule so you can see more next year.

The Charlotte Fly Fishing Show used to be 3 days. The vendors liked the 2 day event better since it was one less day they had to be on the road out of town. Hard to say what we'll do next year, but I'll know more as we set things in stone over the next 30 days.

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To tell you the truth, for any show of this size and so many builders attending I wouldn't expect everything to be perfect. I went to several seminars, bought a ton of stuff, talked rod building with a bunch of guys and about the only thing I didn't do was win something at the Rodmaker reception. This is the best event in all of rod building. I'll be back again next year ready for more.

The accolades can't be piled on Tom high enough to thank him for his vision and his drive to get this thing going and to improve upon it. Tom, the sky's the limit with this thing!! Thank you for the most memorable weekend of my life since my marriage 28 years ago the very same weekend (was the first anniversary we were apart).

Putter