Patrick Kilby’s mail at work is more interesting than yours.

Though not always more pleasant, his mail is almost certainly more intriguing. In it, he’s received foam pool noodles, random sections of repurposed aluminum rain gutter, PVC pipe and even an official police evidence bag.

Once, when he naively got excited about what appeared to be a Russell Stover Yard of Chocolate — undoubtedly, he dared to hope, a gift from some thankful customer — he was quickly brought back to reality.

That box, like the others, contained the shattered remains of somebody’s much-loved fishing rod, which had ultimately succumbed to the trials of the wild and broken.

Question: Why is Kilby’s mail so full of fishing rods in need of repair?

Answer: Because Kilby is a warranty supervisor for Far Bank Enterprises, in charge of overseeing warranty claims for both Sage and Redington brand fly fishing rods. He receives the damaged equipment and, like a fishing-obsessed crime scene investigation tech, sifts through the owner’s story and the physical evidence to ensure, if at all possible, the damage is covered.

It almost always is, he said, which makes the stories even funnier.

Founded here on Bainbridge in 1980 by renowned rod designer Don Green, Sage is an island institution in every sense. It is both one of the largest private employers on Bainbridge, with more than 175 workers, and one of the largest manufacturers of any kind.

The company’s rods are well-known in the fishing world, both for their reassuring warranty and their quality and durability, passing through a strict in-house approval system before being shipped out to eager anglers all over the world.

Of course, Kilby laughed, that’s where the real tests are.

“We get all kinds of creative ways people send stuff in to us,” he said. “Every single rod has a story.”

Once in the field, a myriad of hazards awaits the gear and, when the worst happens, it’s up to Kilby to investigate and determine if the damage is the result of the owner’s mistake, unavoidable wear, the unwanted attention of an animal’s teeth, a totally random act of God — he once received a pole that had actually been struck by lightning — or the possible, if very rare, factory error.

“This is just such a small percentage of everything we do, but it’s these entertaining ones that really stand out,” Kilby said of his favorite cases.

“Rods are going to break [and] accidents are going to happen, but it’s the true stories that are just told how they really happened, that you couldn’t make up. Those are the best.”

Truth is, as the saying goes, stranger than fiction. An adage which most definitely applies to the aforementioned rod that arrived in a police evidence bag.

“It’s the real deal,” Kilby said of the packaging. “It was the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. and a customer had to drop his rod off at a fly shop. They weren’t open yet, so he left the rod at the front door. Well, because it was the Olympics and everyone’s on high alert and there was a parade scheduled to come through in front of the shop, somebody reported this suspicious device and the bomb squad was dispatched and they collected it and disposed of it by blowing it up.”

So the tube, with the rod inside, was demolished and put into evidence. However, he added, the customer was able to get it back and the sales rep for that area sent the busted gear in.

When asked if “counter-terrorism operations” were covered by the warranty, Kilby laughed, saying only, “We took care of the customer.”

Among some of the most notorious rods in Kilby’s collection of mishaps is perhaps the rod which was broken to save a life.

“This guy, he had gone out fishing and noticed what he thought was an animal in the water,” Kilby explained. “He got closer [and] realized it was a dog. The dog had fallen in and was trapped against this bank and was scared, frozen, shaking from being in the cold water all night.”

The only escape for this dog was for the angler to grab him and carry the dog back upstream.

“He said he had no choice,” Kilby laughed.

Apparently, the generators on this dam-controlled water were going to raise the water levels up, so the dog would have been swept down or maybe even killed, the customer reported. So, as he was ducking under a fallen tree — dog in his arms and rod in his mouth — the tip of the rod got snagged and broke off.

One heartfelt letter and a few minor repair costs later, Kilby got a photo of the customer with his new shaggy best friend, thanking him for seeing to the rod’s repair.

Every new Sage rod, blank rod and Sage series reel is covered by a comprehensive lifetime warranty for the original owner, Kilby explained. So, quite often, even the repairs that aren’t totally covered are not expensive.

But the stories are priceless.

“You’re never going to make everyone happy,” Kilby admitted. “There’s always people that want it faster [and] they don’t want to pay, which is totally understandable. I fish, too, and I want my stuff back fast and I don’t want to pay for things, but there’s really only a few reasons rods break.”

The tales behind the reasons for repairs — often amazing, touching and hilarious — are far more diverse. Kilby’s heard the sagas of anglers fending off mountain lions, swatting at super aggressive bees and, apparently, fencing with a tree.

“We have a distributor in Japan and they were trying to tell us what happened to [this] rod, but I think it’s just a lost-in-translation moment,” Kilby said, explaining that the paperwork merely said: “He beat a tree strongly with the rod.”

“It just makes us laugh,” he said. “He could just be saying [that] ‘He hit a tree on the back cast,’ or whatever, but it’s the way it got worded that was awesome.”

Once, while in Indonesia, one customer reported that monkeys got into his boat and made off with a few of the rods that he had, and, as he was chasing them off into the jungle, the rods were destroyed as they were dragged.

It’s a point of pride for everyone at Sage, Kilby said, that their product is of a quality that allows them to offer such a comprehensive warranty. The rods hardly ever need repair, he said.

But when they do, there’s always a good story waiting in the package.