I have been a customer of H&H for several years now and have always been pleased with their products and service. I also appreciate their long support of this and other sites. But I also have refinished several bamboo rods and am a novice bamboo rod builder. I have been very fortunate to have had some of the members of the "elite bamboo society" take me under their wing and teach me the techniques and tricks of their beautiful craft. Contrary to what has been written on the H&H bamboo page, I have found the bamboo community to be very open and inviting. Opinionated... most certainly, but these are craftsmen who take their craft/art VERY seriously. Perhaps 20-25 years ago the world of bamboo rod making was shrouded in mystery, but those days are past now. All that is left is the individual craftmen's variations on common techniques or methods, which is what separate the novice from the masters. But in my time of association with these "secret society members" my understanding of rods has grown, my casting and fishing ability has improved, and I have made some lifelong friends, just like through my association with the folks on FAOL. I am a young father with a mortgage and a long way to go before retirement. I am not a rich man. My lack of money has never been an impediment to building a rod. This has been because of the tremendous generosity of other more experienced builders and collectors. I should also note, that for every ?rich collector? that I have met, I have met at least a hundred bamboo rod builders and collectors who are rod rich and money poor. I have never met a single rodmaker who has every gotten rich or for that matter ever made much more than a meager living making bamboo rods.

My first exposure to bamboo was an imported bamboo rod from Elkhorn. It is a very fishable rod that I still own. Since then I have been blessed with the opportunity to cast bamboo rods by classic makers that cast circles around that Elkhorn, as they should since they cost thousands more and were made my master craftsmen. I might add that it is only through the generosity of some of these so called "elitists" who owned these rods, that I was able to have the pleasure of casting some of these Stradivarius'. I never had to beg, these men offered the opportunity knowing full well that I was never in a position to purchase these rods from them. They simply wanted me to be able to see what a great rod can do, which will only improve my rod building in the future. I do owe a debt of gratitude to that Elkhorn rod though, since without having purchased it, I probably would never have pursued this path which has given me great reward.

Having said all this, I hope the folks at H&H (and FAOL) understand me when I make this statement - I was VERY offended by the statements made on H&H's bamboo page about the bamboo rod community. From personal experience, I have found these statements to be very unfair, even patently false and insulting, not to me, but more importantly, to some very close friends of mine. Until these statements are removed from their website and a clarification statement is issued, I refuse to spend another dollar of my money at Hook & Hackle.