Lamson…why do you hate me?

The first time the Waterworks/Lamson reel company made me look like a jack ass was last spring. I was in Steamboat Springs fishing private water with some guide friends of mine. They were out of some Orvis shop, so I was giving them grief about their crappy, foreign-made equipment. Just good-natured ribbing…like soldiers mocking sailors. All in good fun. But I was really letting them have it. Then one of them handed me back one of my favorite 5 weight setups…

“Dig the rod,” he said. “But what’s up with the reel?”

The rod was a Sage. The reel…a Lamson Litespeed. Less then a year old. Drag completely shot. Five-weight fly line free spooling wildly in all directions. Awesome. I felt like a gigantic tool…like my regional Lamson rep had just de-pantsed me at a party. In front of the pretty girls. Damn!

The clutch assembly had died. Had to replace it a week later at the shop in Boulder.

The second time the Waterworks/Lamson reel company tried to make me look like a jack ass was this spring. I was bass fishing from a canoe…and the culprit was a Velocity reel with 6-weight line. And same thing, clutch croaked. But this time I was prepared—I had a spare clutch assembly stashed in my fishing pack. So there I was, with all these reel parts disassembled and spread out on the top of my leg…one lurch of the boat and all would have been done. Good grief…