Hakes: Iowa City woman’s art emerges in elaborate, hand-crafted fishing rods

It’s hard to comprehend how Becky Loyd of Iowa City can create the elaborate, artistic, and superbly functional fishing rods she does unless you see her in action.

Or, unless you are an angler of exceptional skill who knows his or her stuff and is willing to plunk down a minimum of $750 to own a Becky Loyd original from her Buffalo Creek Rods company.

Becky’s custom fly rods and casting rods are made to fish with – perfectly balanced and custom-made for each client’s style of fishing, hand size, line weight, lure weight and more. Whether they want a graphite, boron, or fiberglass rod, or maybe a bamboo rod for purists – she does them all.

“Right from the start, I ask them what kind of fish they are after, where they fish and how often,” she told me. “I need to know if they are fishing for crappies in Iowa or rainbow trout in the mountains.”

When she’s matched the right rod blank (the pole) to the right customer, she locates each rod’s natural “spine” to determine its best fighting strength and then installs the line guides in the most favorable position and number along the rod. The guide placement, she says, is critical.

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Exotic woods for handles

The art comes next. In her extensive 30-by-30-foot workshop packed with lathes, a router, a planer and multiple electric saws, she selects the customer’s handle preference. It might be cork, ebony, walnut, or something else from her exotic wood inventory, ready to be custom turned on her lathe. If they want handle grips to fit their hand, she can do that too.

Each line guide on the rod is fastened by wrapping special extra-strength thread in a multitude of colors. Artistic thread-wrapping or weaving in custom designs accents the area of many of the rods just above the handle. Becky uses special loom-like equipment to weave and wrap her rods, or will sometimes do this by hand. Either way, it’s a painstaking process with beautiful results.

For example, she fashioned one of her rod handles with an inlay design of maple, walnut and purple heart wood. Since she wanted the decorative thread wrap above the handle to match the purple heart wood, she wove ultra-thin red and blue threads together to give off a purple hue.

“My textile degree sometimes comes into use,” she said with a grin. She holds a degree in textile chemistry from the University of Iowa, but her 40-year working career was in emergency services in Johnson County. She was a Critical Care Paramedic, a supervisor and also traveled to natural disasters with a federal team.

Becky thrives on experimentation with her rods and has attended multiple classes to learn new techniques, which have paid off in numerous awards at rod-building shows over the years.

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Using snake, stingray skin

Besides thread, she has used snakeskin, stingray skin, crystals, horsehair, multicolored beads and other innovative materials. Each of her rods also has a domed buffalo nickel for an end cap, the kind crafted by Native Americans for use as buttons.

Her most extensive beadwork was for a rod donated to a charity auction in Madison, Wisconsin, for hospitalized kids. Becky was one of five rod makers invited to contribute.

“I threaded 8,222 beads,” she said. “It was iridescent in the sun. But this sucker took two solid days just for the beadwork.”

Some of her rod customers prefer to hang her rods above their cabin fireplace mantels, rather than risk damaging them through fishing. Becky says she is proud of her product either way. She taught classes in the art for several years and has served on the National Rod Building Guild board of directors.

But her interests do not stop with fishing rods. She also crafts elaborate fairy houses out of stumps of wood – not for sale, but to become treasured keepsakes for young relatives and friends.

Her husband Bob takes credit for her rod-building expertise. He broke his favorite fly rod while fishing out west some 25 years ago, which prompted her to take classes and build him a new one. Things blossomed from there.

Custom rods take time

Order a rod from Becky and be prepared to wait six months for delivery. Now retired, she makes custom rods at the rate of only two or three per year.

“She is so meticulous and puts in hundreds of hours on this,” quipped Bob. “It comes out to about $6 per hour.”

He should know. He has engineering degrees from both UI and ISU and before retiring, had a successful career in various industries, including operations director for a startup wind turbine company. He also has a meticulous hobby -- refurbishing classic vehicles in his own large workshop/mancave.

You would think Becky would have dozens of her own fishing stories about landing lunkers, based on her fascination with the angler’s tool. You would be wrong.

“Bob’s the one who loves to fish,” she told me. “I’d rather make rods. I’m not patient enough to fish.”

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Richard Hakes is a columnist for the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Hakes: How an Iowa woman finds creative inspiration in fishing rods