History

In the beginning of the 19^th century fishing rods were essentially glorified willow branches... Of course there was the occasional innovation, such as connections - ferrules, splices - to increase the length of a rod, or the use of exotic – tropical – hardwoods, enabling stronger rods less prone to disintegration or permanent damage; woods that became available as a result of the exploitation of tropical forests by the Brits and Americans. In the Netherlands there was no culture of fishing as a pastime, and therefore there were no innovative developments in fishing gear.

These solid wooden rods were heavy, slow, and prone to breakage under even light strain, especially when not properly cared for. In the second half of the 19^th century some individuals, often gunsmiths, started experimenting with alternative materials and manufacturing methods. Primarily by using bamboo species becoming available from India - initially Calcutta bamboo, or Dendrocalamus strictus, a bamboo species with a rather thin culm wall and many prominent nodes. And spots. Not unlike the bamboo used for cheap kids' rods.

In Japan tenkara rods were and are made from whole bamboo culms, but for our Western fishing styles such rods were not really suited, so we started to experiment with rod joints made from strips saws or split from bamboo culms. First two strips, then three, and finally four strips. Because more bamboo reached Britain, with its far eastern colonies, than America, these first experiments were done primarily in England and Scotland. However, the first experiments with rod joints, and later complete rods, made from six strips were done in America, more specifically by a gunsmith from Pennsylvania, one Samuel Philippe, around 1850. Sadly none of his rods survive, although one or two made by his son, Solon Philippe, are preserved in the American Museum of Fly Fishing.

Even so, making split bamboo fishing rods remained a cottage industry mostly, where local artisans, usually gunsmiths or other fine-mechanical workers, made fishing rods for local clients. There were multiple reasons for this, not least that fishing, and especially fly fishing, as a pastime was an activity that only few people could afford, both money-wise and, more importantly, time-wise. If as a rich New Yorker in those days, you wanted to go fishing in the trout streams of upstate New York, that would easily demand several weeks of your time, travelling to the Catskills forest by foot, horseback or stagecoach. Fishing was for the happy few, and making rods was not a major industry – there was a much larger market for guns and pistols. Besides, Calcutta bamboo wasn’t the ideal material for making strip bamboo rods, especially not 6-strip rods. Due to the thin layer of vascular bundles known as ‘power fibers’, this material was more suited for making 4-strip rods. This situation did not change much until the end of the 19^th or beginning of the 20^th century, with the advent of a number of developments, such as the rise of a large, affluent middle class (larger market), cultivation of large tracts of wasteland (better access to fishing spots), much increased travel opportunities (not least through the building of railroads), and eventually the rise of Tonkin cane as alternative to Calcutta bamboo (stronger, heavier walls, and much improved knot pattern).

But it would take the vision and genius of Hiram Leonard to take the making of split bamboo fishing rods from a local craft to a manufacturing industry, mechanizing the important steps in turning a bamboo culm into a finished fishing rod, such as the sawing the culm into strips, milling those strips to final taper, and glueing these tapered strips into rod joints. In the years following these developments the market for fly rods grew exponentially. Not least because of the growing economy and the associated expansion of leasure time, in league with the American hang for spending that leasure time in the outdoors, fishing and hunting in true pioneer spirit. And with that growing market came more makers that saw rod making on an industrial scale as a worthwhile enterprise. Small companies and large companies, mass market companies and high end makers, from Heddon and Montague, to South Bend and Cross, to  Orvis, Leonard, Powell, or Granger. Followed by the likes of Winston, Phillipson, Wright&McGill, PH Young, and others. Or in England companies like Hardy, and Ogden Smith, or Allcocks; or in France Pezon&Michel. The 1930s to 1950s of the 20^th century were the heydays of splitcane. And if it hadn’t been for the embargo on Chinese imports in the 1950s (due to the Communist revolution) that heyday would undoubtedly have continued for a while. The glass fibre rods that were being developed during those days (the solid fiber rods invented by Dubois, or the hollow rods according to Howalds later patent, and later still the woven hollow rods)  were, at the time, significantly inferior to split cane rods. But cheaper, and easier to mass produce. And, all of a sudden, the only viable option remaining for the exploding market following the economic boom of the ’50s and ’60s. These developments, embargo and exploding market, resulted in the marginalization of bamboo rods and a dominance of fiber-reinforced plastic rods, glass fibre first, then carbon, boron, as well as a few failed experiments.

A good introduction into how rods were made industrially in the 1950s at companies like Hardy can be found in the 1974 documentary 'To Cane a Trout', available at the Yorkshire film archive (https://www.yfanefa.com/record/23556). Be prepared - there’s a lot of sawing and milling going on. And no rod is made from strips from a single culm… 

But bamboo rod making did not completely die out. Even in that postwar era, when cane disappeared from the market almost completely, there was a handful of stubborn individuals who kept making split bamboo rods, with what basically was ‘hobbyist tools’ (like planing forms and hand planes) or sometimes with antique machinery, bought for a pittance at bankruptcy auctions or clearances. And some companies that had thrived in the bamboo era but moved on to other, more profitable business, such as Orvis, Winston, or Scott, kept offering bamboo rods, out of a sort of nostalgic sentiment – for the small community that still valued these rods. But bamboo rods seemed destined for a certain, albeit slow, demise. Until, that is, in the early 1970s the book 'A Master's Guide to Building the Bamboo Flyrod’, by Hoagy B. Charmichael and Everett Garrison was published after the death of Garrison. Garrison was a railway engineer who made bamboo rods basically as a hobby, starting in the 1930s, but rationalized the task to the full extent of his engineering background and by that approach, and his hang for perfection, garnered more respect as a rod builder than many a professional. The publication of this book, in which his approach to building bamboo fly rods is described in minute detail, albeit not always very clearly, was the starting point of a remarkable renaissance in artisanal bamboo rod making that endures today.

But why, you might ask?

There’s a number of reasons for that. For a rod maker, an important consideration is that with bamboo, it is ‘easy’ to design and create your own tapers and blanks. With fiber-reinforced plastic rods, you’re always at the mercy of what large (or small) blank manufacturers are willing or able to offer; small-time rod makers are not big, or rich enough to have a blank manufacturer make blanks to their exact specification, and creating your own blank rolling facility, while not technically unfeasible, is also way out of reach for all but a very few, hobbyists - I know of only two outfits that were started as such in the UK - Harrison, who primarily cater to the carp fishing community, and David Norwich, who specialized in fly rods and blanks, but has since retired. Other than that, the only option you have as a single rod maker wanting to design your own blank tapers, is to work in bamboo.

In addition to that, split bamboo rods have a number of fishing and casting properties that other materials do not offer. First and foremost is the mass of a rod with a given action – higher than a similar glass rod, and significantly higher than a comparable carbon rod. That mass makes it easier to load a rod during casting from its own dynamic weight, improving close-quarter casting, as well as facilitating casting in general.

It’s often said that bamboo rods are ‘slow’, without detailing what exactly is meant by that (and often without any actual hands-on experience with bamboo rods…).  However, bamboo rods can be designed to have an action/deflection under load that is comparable to the fastest carbon rods out there. Then where does that notion of bamboo being slow come from? Well, there’s a few reasons for that, but the only ‘real’ technical issue is that bamboo’s recovery speed is slower than that of a carbon composite: when you take a carbon fibre rod (tapered cantilever beam) and a bamboo rod of identical deflection characteristics (‘action’) and load characteristics, load them statically, and then release that load, that carbon fibre rod will revert faster to neutral than the bamboo rod (carbon has a higher eigenfrequency), and therefore in theory also generate a (slightly) higher line speed. On the other hand, bamboo’s natural damping is higher than that of carbon fibre composites, so the bamboo rod will stop oscillating quicker, and thereby generate less waves in your line. Moreover, line speed during actual casting is only for a small fraction generated by the recovery speed of the rod – most of it is generated by the cast and haul itself. As such, this ‘slowness’ has relatively little effect on actual performance.

The real issue is that many old bamboo rods were made for different fishing and casting styles than we employ today, such as wet fly fishing, which requires a slower line speed and deeper ‘action’ than dry fly fishing. Our current approaches to nymph fishing and dry fly fishing require fast tip actions, preferably in longer rods. If you have been raised with these styles of fishing, old bamboo rods will feel slow, not because they are made of bamboo, but because they were designed for a fishing style that required slow rods.

Plus there are lots of plain inferior bamboo rods (and old, worn out bamboo rods) still out there. Rods that should’ve been trashed long ago. Rods that were inferior even when they were new, because they were made not as quality tools, but just to satisfy a market demand at a certain price point. That is one thing that modern carbon rods have over old bamboo - carbon rod design has been democratized to such an extent than anyone can design a decent rod, and even rods manufactured at a bottom-end-of-the-market price point can be decent performers. They generally won’t last, but they won’t be bad right off the assembly line.

So we’ve established that bamboo flyrods have casting advantages over carbon rods. They also have fishing advantages – the slower recovery of bamboo vs. carbon generally improves its hooking action by being less jerky, and can better protect thin tippets. Oh, and despite popular belief, bamboo rods are actually less vulnerable than carbon rods. You can stand on a bamboo rod with no ill effects (other than possibly bending a few snake guides) – you really shouldn’t try that with fragile hollow carbon. They will also cope more gracefully with heavy beadhead nymph impacts or attack by feral car doors… at least butt sections will. Bamboo is more sensitive to over stressing than carbon, and need more attention when storing – they should be dry before storing them in enclosures, such as rod tubes, and may suffer from being exposed to prolonged heat (such as being left in a car on a very sunny day) – depending on the types of glue used for the different components: metal ferrules are usually the first parts to suffer.. 

But the one true drawback of bamboo rods is their cost. Which is a result from the fact that they are no longer mass produced, but are the end product of many hours of manual labour by struggling artisans. Coupled with the fact that many plastic rods these days are made as disposable objects. Someone trying to make a living out of making bamboo fishing rods would easily have to charge 2000 euros for a rod, even without fancy cosmetics - and even then, he or she wouldn’t get rich doing it. On the other hand, when you consider that loads of people shell out 900 euros for a disposable piece of plastic resin and synthetic fibers, once every few years, a lifetime investment in one or two fine bamboo rods shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

If you’ve read this far, I would recommend that you seek out an experienced maker of bamboo (fly) rods, and ask whether you can visit and test cast some of his or her rods – tell them what sort of rods you prefer, at what distances you normally fish (be honest here ;-) ) and how best to describe your casting style. Chances are, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what bamboo can do for you.