Tom feel free to remove the thread if it crosses the line.

I originally saw the clip on another site, but am posting a link to it's location on youtube. It's from a Bassmaster's Tournament in 1996, and something caught my eye. Around the 4:30 mark, there is a clip of Mike Auten catching a smallmouth on a split grip, and I'm pretty sure no fore grip rod. At that time, I'm not sure there was anybody else other than Rich Forhan building rods in this manner. Thanks again Rich for sharing your techniques that have helped advance custom rod building. If the build was not one of Rich's, congrats to the builder for being years ahead of the curve. Hopefully Mr. Forhan will step in and share if it was one of his builds or not.

[www.youtube.com]

Joe

I remember some Berkeley rods back in the late 80s, or extremely early 90s with split grips and very futuristic looking reel seats than there were the Mitchell Fulcrum rods, Seen spiral wrapped rods in the same era, a gentleman who's name has long escaped me was prefishing Rodman Res. and had some rods built by a custom builder by the name of Hart. He called them Roberts wrapped rods.

I had a Berkley series 1 from about 1990 that had a split grip. It was a great rod, but the handle reel seat was not that good, in my opinion.

I just read Rich Forhan's article from #4-4 yesterday. What a great article. I learned a long time ago to read all I can from him over the years.