Weekend in Florida
I spent this past weekend in Titusville, FL. about 40 miles from Orlando. I was there for the Renzetti Fly Fair and Rod Building expo. It was a two day event that started on Friday. A lot of legends in the fly fishing sector were in attendance, such as Lefty Kreh, Bob Clouser, Bob Popovics, Jon Cave, Pat Ehlers, Nick Curcione, Brian Horsley and his wife Sarah Gardner. This event is held every other year to raise money for Casting for Recovery and Project Healing Waters. There were fly tyers, people doing presentations, casting classes and casting demo's. Also Hells Bay Boats were there a long with a number of other vendors. They had a silent auction on Friday and Saturday. On Friday night they had a dinner at the La Cita Golf and Country Club along with an auction. This is also where we stayed for 4 days. Nick Curicone gave a speech regarding the fly fishing industry. They auctioned off a fly plate which had flys tied by all the "Legends", even I had one in the box.
It sold for $800.00. They had other prizes like a Abel Reel, TFO Rods, Yeti Bag, Yeti coffee mugs.
Presentations like fly tying were done by Lefty, Bob Popovics, Bob Clouser, Steve Farrer, and me.
Then on Saturday evening we had an after show party at the Casa de Renzetti. There house is located right on the Mosquito Lagoon and directly across the lagoon is the Cape Canaveral launch pad. There was suppose to be a scheduled launch on Thursday but it got cancelled, then on Friday and Saturday it was cancelled again. It finally went off on Sunday at 4:45pm. Damn, I missed another launch. I was at the airport in Orlando at that time.
This was the 5th show that the Renzetti's have put on. I attended the first two shows which started in 2006 and after the show in 2007, they started doing the event every other year. The next event will be held in December of 2017. I sure hope Lefty will be in attendance. Do you know he's 90 years young and still doing things like shows and some fishing. At the breakfast and dinners, he kept the whole crowd laughing and really interested in his stories from way back when. He's a real interesting person, going back and meeting and fishing with a lot of presidents, movie stars, etc. He's known Andy Renzetti since the early 70's. And even helped Andy start up Renzetti, Inc. Andy developed the first full rotary vise back in 1974 or 1976. I can't remember what he said. He also came out with the first "V" type shaft on a vise. An amazing machinest. He's also machined part for the space shuttle program.
Anyway, I'm attached a few photo's from the event. A few people asked me to post some to this site since a lot of people aren't on Face book.
Andy and Lily Renzetti
Lefty tying a Lefty's Deceiver on the new Renzetti Special Edition Vise
Lefty giving free casting lessons
Bob Clouser with Linda Heller, Ruth Stokes and Sarah Gardner They taught the women's casting clinic
Bob Popvics, Steve Farrer, Pat Ehlers
Bob Popovics and his new book coming out in January. The master of tying salt water patterns
Nick Curcione
Brian, Sarah, Jay
Jay, Bob Clouser, Lily Renzetti
And of course... Me & Lefty
The group at the Renzetti dinner
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