I'm getting anxious now. Tom Smithwick, who moved to Shippensburg several years ago, builds bamboo fly rods. A couple weeks ago, he found three bamboo rod blanks and offered to help me build out a fly ...

Many who fish with split-cane bamboo fly rods say they allow a depth of feeling when casting or reeling in a fish that just isn’t possible with today’s more common graphite rods. When Selah’s Kevin ...

FREMONT -- Wes Cooper won't be fishing today, the opening day of trout fishing season. He is more likely to be in his basement shop making bamboo fly rods. Cooper, 81, has built 245 such rods since he ...

ESKO -- When Phil Johnson was in college, making $3 an hour working summers at the paper mill in Cloquet, he saved enough to buy himself a bamboo fly rod. "I bought an Orvis Battenkill," says Johnson, ...

I spent a morning this week with David LeClair, an ace fly rod maker in Elbridge. LeClair specializes in making bamboo rods from scratch, but he also does repair work on all types of fly rods (bamboo, ...

Sexton starts with bamboo that comes directly from the Guangdong region in southeast China. From there, he cuts the bamboo, sands it down, and lays several strips together to make what is known as a ...

How long does it typically take to produce a bamboo rod in your workshop? I typically spend around 100 hours making a basic bamboo fly rod. With age and experience comes a desire to make each rod ...

I had owed Jim Downes a visit since last June when I wrangled his little 7 ½-foot Garrison 206 away from him at PA Fly Fishing Heritage Day. That rod has a beautiful, smooth, full-flexing action very ...

I bought my first bamboo fly rod in the 1970s at a garage sale in Boulder. It was a beat-up 3-piece, 9-footer with chromed ferrules and two tip sections. One of the tips was 2 inches short, which ...

Alan Kube stops short of calling it a religious experience. But in a heartbeat, by the waters of the South Platte River near Deckers, his life was forever changed. “I could feel what the rod was doing ...

Bamboo became a popular material for fishing rods in the late-19th century but quickly was replaced with other materials — metal and, later, fiberglass. Modern graphite is considered by many to be the ...