If you are standing on a bridge overlooking a trout stream and you gaze down the stream at the fisherfolk, it's easy to tell the one that's fishing bamboo. That person looks very relaxed and is slowly working the stream.

In comparison, the other folks seem to be on their 8th cup of very strong coffee and are busy jerking their rods back and forth with great determination. They do not seem nearly as relaxed as the one person fishing a bamboo rod.

An exageration??? Possibly, but you sort of get the picture. I do maintain a couple of early plastic rods for heavy duty work on the salt for Tarpon and large Bonefish... but I also use a 9wt Orvis for the same situation.

Bamboo is certainly not for everyone, and I would not advocate it for everyone. But there is a definite group of folks that would use nothing else, except in very unique situations.

Is this good or bad???? No, it's just that these things are different, and it would only take you about one day's fishing to figure out which "camp" you were in.

My bride was so-so about fly fishing... until she took a casting class with my then recently purchased Orvis bamboo... and it was downhill from there. She now loves fly fishing... and HER bamboo rods. Of course she spends as much time standing in the river looking at the eagles, and the herons, and the other folks, etc as she does fishing... but she truly enjoys... and that REALLY makes me happy.

Petri Heil,

Ralph