It was a typical spring morning on Rangeley Lake, with a cool breeze and steady drizzle in the air. My hands were cold and raw from rigging fly rods with smelt. I ran the boat down Greenvale Cove on the northern shore into 20 feet of water. As the cove shallowed, we made a turn, and I heard my port rod scream. I lifted the rod from the holder — one that’s been installed on every boat I own — and played the feisty salmon to the net. This was spring fishing at its best.
The rod holder was a Down-East Sportscraft D-11 model, mounted inside the boat’s gunwale. Most traditional Maine anglers who troll flies use this model, and for good reason. They work. Nearly 80 years later, it’s still being built the same way in Lewiston.
Fritz Peterson was born in 1902 in Woodland, Maine to Swedish immigrant parents and by age 19 was living with his family in Lewiston. After working on the family farm and learning to fix machinery, he struck out for Detroit in 1923 to work for Henry Ford in the burgeoning auto manufacturing business. He returned home and opened Peterson’s Garage, the only automotive repair shop in the region. He soon began a machining business and renamed the shop Peterson’s Garage and Machine Shop.
In 1946, Peterson partnered with Raymond Clough and crafted a rod holder aimed at giving anglers a “third hand.” It was named the Down East Trolling Fishing Rod Holder, now the Down-East Rod Holder in several model variations. Peterson created the dies and bought the first white-metal die casting machine in Maine, manufacturing the rod holders while Clough marketed them. The first version was labeled “Freeport, Maine,” then “Yarmouth, Maine.” In 1972, Clough retired, and Fritz Peterson bought the business and labeled the rod holders “Lewiston, Maine.”
I visited the same shop, minus an addition, recently. Steve Peterson, Fritz’s grandson, gave me a tour and explained the manufacturing process. I felt like I was going back to the turn of the century, seeing the old machines, smelling oil and metal, and watching belts and levers spin. Many of the machines were modified by Fritz Peterson and feature old automotive transmissions to reduce gearing ratios.
Ingots of zinc alloy are melted down and “squirted” into die molds created by Fritz using the same machine he once operated. The cast pieces are removed and placed in a tumbler he also built, where pine sawdust polishes the metal. The pieces are then drilled, tapped, assembled and coated with an anti-corrosive finish before being boxed and shipped worldwide. During my visit, a large shipment was awaiting pickup and delivery to Switzerland.
Third-generation family member Steve Peterson works in the shop full time, while his daughter assists with shipping and marketing, making this a true four-generation family business. Steve does fabrication work, but the rod holder remains the mainstay of the business.
Aside from rod holders, Down-East Sportscraft is well known for its lures and trolling rudders. Steve worked alongside his father and grandfather in his high school years and recalls how his grandfather and Clayton Hamilton, an Auburn tackle manufacturer, brought a live minnow into the shop and traced its outline on a die blank to ensure accurate size and fin placement. The dies were made, and Peterson began producing zinc jigging and trolling lures for Hamilton under the H and J Tackle brand.
Hamilton sold his business in the mid-1960s, and it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that Steve Peterson found the old lure dies and began making them again. I have several of the original 4-ounce rudders and still use them when dragging bottom with steel line and live suckers for lake trout.
Over the years, the Petersons manufactured aluminum gas and oil caps for chainsaws, aluminum window components and, interestingly, more than a million taps for tap shoes. With the shoe industry in high gear in Auburn and Lewiston over the decades, it’s no wonder they were involved in that line.
Today, Steve Peterson continues on the same machines, making the same reliable products his grandfather and father made. In an age where good products get outsourced or discontinued, it’s a good feeling to know the Down-East rod holder can still be had — kind of like bringing along an old, familiar friend in the boat.
