Rod Love, Part 1: Unstructured Glass

I guess, if you think about it, Rod Love could be a good name for a porn star, but I am not a dirty bird like you, so that never crossed my mind... Instead, I think it's a good name for a blog post about an awesome fly rod. As I have often said and written, fly rods are the coolest tools ever invented by man, so I might as well write about them, huh? The first rod in this series is an awesome 8' 4-weight Unstructured Glass beauty.

You may not have heard of Unstructured Glass rods. They are built by a terrific rod builder/educator/music composer/blogger in Boston named Vladan Milenkovic. Vlad builds rods made out of fiberglass, graphite, and even a fiberglass/bamboo combination. His rods are innovative, to say the least. My 8' 4-weight rod is unlike any other glass rod I own. It is more powerful than any other 4-weight rod I know of, yet the tip is surprisingly supple, so short casts can be made with a deft touch. When I recently took it to a glass rod casting session that was put on by my local Trout Unlimited chapter, it got more raves than any other rod I brought. Several people could not believe it was glass, and others could not believe it was a 4-weight. It is truly unique, and awesome.

Beautiful thread wraps.

Here is what Vlad wrote about this exact rod on his blog: "This was a demo rod for The Fiberglass Manifesto loan program. It is in remarkable shape. While the rod cloth has few small stains, the rod almost looks unfished. This series of rods really went "under the radar." A true 4wt medium fast taper, blonde glass. Exceptionally nice quality flor cork handle, burgundy micarta seat w/bright hardware (tapered ring), and hand-painted "brookie spots" artwork by my signature wraps. Matching color guide wraps with red single turn thread inlays. Guides are original Belmar-style Mildrum stripper and Snake Brand snakes and tip top."

The awesome Brookie Spots above the cork, and Vlad's signature wraps.

The super cool linen micarta reel seat insert. Don't feel bad, I had to look up what micarta is too...

If you would like to check out some of Vlad's other work, head over to his blog at https://rodcatalog.blogspot.com/. It sounds like he won't be selling his Unstructured line of glass rods any more, but he has tons of other cool stuff to read about.