Thank goodness he did not listen, waiting instead until his finances solidified before making the leap to full-time reel making in 2008. I urged him to quit the rat race and get down to the important business of supplying impoverished, unreliable and properly obsessed individuals like me with reels we could fish. William was caught in the meat grinder of corporate politics and long hours in a job he detested.

Utah is trout country with a healthy population of high-desert steelheaders, happy to talk about their favorite fish when the next trip to Idaho, Oregon or Washington is a long way off. I first met William while working as a shop rat at Western Rivers Flyfisher in Salt Lake City. He purchased his own equipment in 1999, carefully honing his skills. William first pursued reel making at the hobbyist level as the pressures of work and raising a family exacted their toll. The American magazine Fly Rod & Reel ran an article on Stan Bogdan in 1989, planting a seed in the febrile mind of a young man consumed by a passion for steelhead, cane rods and classic salmon reels. I say вЂњnew,вЂќ but William has been quietly making custom salmon and steelhead reels of the highest caliber since 1995. It is impossible to duplicate that experience in a marketplace dominated by cookie-cutter manufacturing and the sober realities of offshore production.ДЇortunately, for those of us who enjoy the supreme precision and sublime aesthetics of salmon reels crafted by hand, a new maker emerges: William R. If the maker is a friend, you carry a tangible piece of that relationship every time you put reel to rod and step into a river. In a world defined by the assembly line and the anonymous toil of distant workers, it is rare to own anything made by someone you know. Stan was a very good friend, and IвЂ™ve fished his reels for years. It is the end of an era and a sad time for me personally. He has a few salmon reels left-all are pre-sold. I recently spoke to Steve Bogdan, who informed me that the future of S.E. With son Stephen as his partner, Stan constructed the most distinguished and desirable reels for rivers throughout the range of the King of Fish. Stan built reels in New Hampshire for 70 years, crafting reels by hand to impeccable standards on a 130-year-old Flather lathe and more recently a 50-year-old Van Norman milling machine.

His career is a monument in a regal history of salmon and trout reels with manufacturing roots in the German-American tradition of Edward Vom Hofe and Otto Zwarg. Stanley Edward Bogdan died in his hometown of Nashua, New Hampshire, on March 27, 2011, at the remarkable age of 92 years young. Excerpt from the Chasing Silver Magazine, 2012 Issue 3

S e bogdan reels