The Quasi-Religious, Damn-Near-Irrational Appeal of Bamboo Fishing Rods

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Split-bamboo fly rods are better than they’ve ever been.

I first heard this observation from rodmaker John Bradford, a man not known for hyperbole, and it’s hard to argue. Today’s craftsmen have more than 150 years’ worth of collective experience to draw on, plus the advantages of 21st century glues and varnishes. For once, tradition meets high tech with a happy outcome.

As the name implies, a split-bamboo rod is made from strips of bamboo, called “splines,” that are cut from a stalk, or “culm,” of bamboo. (The joints themselves are called nodes.) The strips are then tapered, using either a milling machine or, if you want it to take longer, a hand plane and an adjustable form. Afterward, the segments are glued together into a six-sided shaft.

This method was developed in the mid-1800s and gives a craftsman control over the rod’s taper, which determines the way the rod imparts energy to the fly line during the cast. And in fly-casting, that action is everything. Rodmakers work to tolerances of a few thousandths of an inch on each spline, and a few thousandths one way or the other can mean the difference between a magnificent casting instrument and a broomstick.

For the better part of a century, split bamboo was the benchmark for fly rods. In many cases, aficionados can trace an apostolic succession from one shop to the next as apprentices left to start their own companies. Think of Hiram Leonard, who began producing split-bamboo rods shortly after the Civil War. He taught Edward Payne, who then opened his own business, E.F. Payne Rod Co., where he passed on the craft to his son Jim, who then took over and continued to build bamboo rods until 1968. The lineage of others, such as F.E. Thomas, Goodwin Granger, Pinky Gillum, and Everett Garrison, can be followed in a similar way.

By the 1960s, bamboo’s popularity had faded with the advent of fiberglass and, later, graphite materials that are lighter, more durable, and easier to manufacture. But the obituaries for split bamboo were as premature as those for vinyl records.

Collectors homed in on the period from about 1920 to 1950, a stretch known as the “Golden Age,” and they began to sense a fortune in those classics that could still sometimes be found cheap at yard sales and flea markets as “old fishin’ poles.” Some of these rods can sell for $3,000 to $5,000. I’ve seen extremely rare ones priced at $10,000 or more. Meanwhile, those who continued to fish bamboo, as well as the craftsmen who made their rods, remained a small but vital fishing subculture.

When you consider the daunting amount of time and painstaking handwork that goes into a bamboo rod—South Creek Ltd.’s Mike Clark once told me it takes him 40 hours to make one, and he bangs them out as quickly as anyone I know—it’s not surprising that bamboo fly rods have become luxury items. Some rodmakers even find themselves in the ­awkward ­position of their wares becoming collectible while the craftsmen themselves are still alive and working.

Hoagy Carmichael, one of the authors of A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, was annoyed when he saw his rods go straight from the shop into a glass case without ever being fished. Others took it in stride. When Michigan rodmaker Bob Summers learned a client had bought a rod at the going rate, only to turn around and sell it for ­considerably more to a collector, he shrugged and raised his prices.

The price tag is inevitably part of any discussion of bamboo fly rods, and often it’s the opening salvo. Fishermen usually ask me, “Why go to R.L. Winston, Thomas & Thomas, Tom Morgan Rodsmiths, or Tellico River Rods for bamboo costing thousands when I can get a serviceable graphite rod starting around $300 or $400?”

It’s a fair question with a vague answer. Part of it is the way we value the Yankee workshop-like tradition of fine handwork done with what we now consider to be primitive tools, as well as the antique virtues of skill and patience.

But there’s also some unapologetic nostalgia at work here. Bamboo fly rods can recall a time when life was simpler, fish bigger (and more numerous), and fishermen fewer and farther between. Or so we like to imagine.

For others, it’s the material itself. Bamboo is a species of grass—more like a reed than a piece of lumber—and it has a natural sensitivity that more modern ­materials lack. Bamboo fans say that their rods cast more fluidly, that their slight extra weight does more of the work, and that they’re better at cushioning light leaders. Where a graphite caster would talk about power and efficiency, one who uses bamboo might invoke terms such as “warmth” and “friendliness.”

There’s also the matter of uniqueness. Part of the character of every rod is imparted by the particular culm of bamboo from which it was made—its size, age, density, moisture content, whether or not it was heat-treated, and if so, how—so that even among identical rods by the same maker, there can be discernible differences. And bamboo rods, like violins, are said to evolve with use, so even if a rod doesn’t have a personality the first time you string it up, it will after you’ve fished with it for a few seasons.

Is this all beginning to sound a little mystical? Well, that’s how they get under your skin. The late rodmaker Charlie Jenkins once told me that half of what his ­customers were buying was the image of the lone craftsman in his workshop with his glasses pulled down on his nose, hand-making their rod. That sounds mostly right to me. Of course, Charlie was too modest to add that, in his case, the other half was one damned fine fly rod.

John Gierach is the author of more than 20 books about fly fishing, including A Fly Rod of Your Own, Standing in a River Waving a Stick, and the anthology Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders. His next book, Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers, will be available in April. 

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net, James Gaddy

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