Beauty and the Certain Way

Sport is a matter of doing a certain thing in a certain way. That certain way will not be the most efficient way; you can get a ball in a hole by walking over and dropping it in, but it's not golf and it's not sport. The way of doing it is chosen for its challenge, its beauty, or a little of both, but too much of either and it ceases to be sport. The so-called "extreme sports", where it's all about endurance and determination and suffering, are more a test of manhood than a sport. If it becomes all about beauty, it begins to be art rather than sport, as in figure skating or dressage.

Sport is optional frustration: it's not critical to succeed, and you can walk away from it, which you can't do at your job. Sometimes, if you're smitten enough with a sport, the doing of it in that certain way becomes more important than whether you succeed. In his book On Hunting, philosopher Ortega y Gassett says, "One does not hunt in order to kill. One kills in order to have hunted." Or to put it another way, it's not success unless you did it in a certain way. And that certain way can take some odd turns.

For some folks, the sporting instinct requires a return to older, more primitive methods: muzzle-loading flintlock instead of modern rifle, bow instead of rifle, longbow instead of compound bow. For some of us it's beauty which draws us back in time, to wood from carbon fiber, from plastic and graphite to silk.

For me it was bamboo.

For centuries fly rods were made of wood, often a very particular wood such as lancewood or greenheart, or even combinations. They were very long and very heavy. Sometime in the 19th century, rod-makers began experimenting with bamboo tips on their wooden rods, finding it offered power with lightness. Eventually rods became all-bamboo. By late in the century all the best rods were bamboo, and it remained king until around the end of the Second World War when fiberglass took the fishing world by storm. Still later came today's ubiquitous graphite. Bamboo could not compete with materials which were cheaper and better suited to mass production. Bamboo, being a natural substance, is variable and inconsistent. Two pieces of the same density and dimensions can produce very different rods. To use it well takes something you can't get from a machine. After a few decades when only a few makers soldiered on, bamboo was remembered and has enjoyed a real renaissance.

Bamboo is expensive. Good bamboo must be selected stick by stick, and aged from years to decades. You must know which piece is best for the type of rod you have in mind, and how to taper it to get the action hidden within. There is a lot of fine hand work involved. It's been estimated that building a good rod takes 40 hours of a skilled workman's time. Between the time and the materials and the years it takes to learn to do it well, a good bamboo can run into the thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of dollars. And the good makers have waiting lists, often five or more years. Just about any good graphite will do the job just as well or sometimes better, and you can get it now and cheaper, so why bother?

Because of beauty and the certain way.

Bamboo sticks are called culms. When the culm has seasoned, the maker splits it lengthwise, then again and again until he has six thin strips. Using a plane, he tapers the strips to an exact formula, then glues them together to form a rod hexagonal in cross-section, thicker at the butt and finer toward the tip. He builds two or three sections, each finer than the last, to make a two-or three-piece rod. The tip sections can be amazingly fine, narrower than the diameter of the o in this font. All with a hand plane. Then the grip, reel seat, ferrules for connecting the sections, and guides for the line must be made and attached, and the whole thing varnished. The varnishing itself is an art, and a point of pride for good makers. But first he signs it.

Building time can be shortened by using a milling machine to rough out the tapers, but in the end there's still a lot of hand work, gluing, straightening, varnishing, wrapping guides and so on.

The result is a rod which is heavier, and often slower, but no less powerful than today's rods. It will be beautiful, a pale straw color, or golden, or even dark as mahogany depending on the technique of seasoning and tempering the cane. You will find the action is sweet and smooth, and it doesn't happen all at once. You can feel the rod loading and working, and it just seems to cast itself. A bamboo is graceful while a graphite is purposeful and efficient.

Beloved rods get used a lot, and well-used rods get broken. But a bamboo can be repaired, sometimes so well that you can't find the fracture with a magnifier. Most come with two tips, so a tip break isn't the end of your fishing trip. And they last: I still regularly fish an old Granger Aristocrat built before 1938. Yes, I've broken it, and no, I can't see the repair.

After many heavy fish, a bamboo can take a "set", remaining slightly curved at rest. A good maker can straighten it and return the rod good as new. My Granger finished last season with a set in both tips, the sign of a very good year. I just got it back from the shop, all straight and with new varnish, grip, and guide wraps to boot.

There is a lively market for used bamboo, and that's where to get your feet wet. You can easily get in for under a grand, often half that. The good dealers will give you a very detailed description of the rod's action and condition, and often a bit of provenance. Most will allow three days to try the rod before the sale is final. Just browsing their websites is a good way to learn. You'll find that the shortest rods have the glamor prices, which I don't get. For me the most useful length is eight or eight and a half feet, which works just fine for all but the tiniest streams; my shortest rods are 7 ½' and aren't used nearly as much as the longer ones. All but two are old.

When bamboo was in its first golden age (I think we're now in the second), fly lines were made of tapered braided silk, and the rods were built with that in mind. A silk line is thinner than the equivalent plastic line, has no memory so it doesn't develop coils and kinks, and lasts for twenty seasons or more if well cared for. In modern terms they are "intermediate" lines; the don't float, but sink very slowly. To float them you grease them, and in that state they sit on top of the surface, not in it as plastic floaters do. This makes them startlingly easy to pick up off the water. Then at day's end you just wipe off the grease. They are still being made, and better than ever. Of course there's hand work and real craft involved, so the price is nothing to sneeze at, usually around $200. But a new plastic line costs seventy, and only lasts a few seasons, so silk is actually cheaper. And it's beautiful. I've seen comments about the demanding care of silk, but I've just wiped it down after use and spread it to dry before storing, and my first silk line is 18 years old now and still catching fish.

I'll still use graphite when I want a rod over 8 feet 6 inches, or when I fish saltwater, where a 10-foot 10-weight bamboo would be too heavy. But given the choice I like to wield a tool made lovingly by one man, and see his name as I string up, and watch the smooth beautiful loops unroll, and hear the delightful 'pop' as the metal ferrules separate at the end of the day. It's my certain way, and I find it beautiful.

For further reading and browsing:

• Len Codella's website always has good stuff in all price ranges, and he's a fair dealer from whom I've bought several rods.

• Vintage Fly Tackle is a relative newcomer. They have very good rods, also for all budgets, and I've been quite happy with their service.

• Fishing Bamboo by John Gierach is the best introduction to bamboo that I've ever read, and I re-read it often. In fact, any of Gierach's writing on fishing is worth reading.