American Icons - Fly Fishing - Charles Ritz ©Terry Heffernan

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Artifacts from the Museum of American Fly Fishing

Charles Ritz 1891 - 1976

Son of the famed hotelier, Charles Ritz began rebuilding broken and discarded split bamboo rods while working night duty at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York in 1917. His skill transformed them into objects of beauty. In addition to writing the fishing classic, "A Fly Fisher's Life", Ritz invented the prototype "parabolic" fly rod, designed a Vario-Power rod with a glass butt and bamboo tip and an all-glass rod called the LL/LF, and developed a casting innovation that he called "high speed, high line". Ritz's idea of paradise, of course, included flying fishing, a point he made when he wrote, "When you get to heaven, look me up..I shall know where the best trout are lying. Even there, knowledge of the water and correct presentationshall prove all-important factors". Pictured is Ritz's "Wheatley Silmalby" fly box, made in England.

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