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As I look back through the years and attempt to recall them
as individual units, they seem to be catalogued in my memory
by theme. Some are fishing years. Some are defined by issues
at work, at home, or by a specific event (for instance, that portion
of my teen years that will always be labeled "the scouting years.")
Not that those are the only things that happened, or even sometimes
the most memorable in a given year; they just seem to be what that
year gets filed under in my memory. 2008 was definitely a fishing
year. I met several fellow FAOLers, fished with Ohiotuber for
steelhead and trophy bluegills, put Byron Zuehlsdorff onto his first
wiper, spent a summer evening with Jiggin on a friend's farm pond.
I didn't get to fish with Joe Hyde this year, and once more failed to
get Betty Hiner away from the trout stream. It was also my first full
year of marriage, Marguerite's first trout on the fly, and trying to find
room for the accumulations of two lives in one house. But, when I dig
the last twelve months out of the memory banks in the years to come,
it will almost certainly be labeled the year of the bamboo rod.
A while back, I got a deal I couldn't refuse on a 6wt Partridge Cumberland
bamboo blank. What I didn't have was even an inkling of how to transform
the blank into a rod. Betty told me that if I got the components I wanted,
she would build the rod. It took me quite a while to pick out a reel seat,
finally having to resort to having one made, and make all the other little
decisions that seem to go into such a project. We finally got it all together,
Betty did her magic, and about the time the ice was going out this spring,
she placed in my hand a beautiful, finished bamboo rod.
This is not my first bamboo rod. My first bamboo rod came
from my father by way of my grandfather, is three times older
than I am (we'll just say it's old and save the math for another
day), and looks to be about a 3wt with both tips and all the
original hardware still intact. I've fished it a few times, but despite
knowing how strong and durable bamboo is, I've always been a
little afraid to use it much. My new rod, being a 6wt and not so
heavily burdened by family history, was destined to see a lot of
water and hopefully a lot of species.
After a few weeks of restlessly waiting for the last of the ice
to go away, I finally got a chance to test my new rod at a
housing development pond on the edge of town. Not the
pristine mountain meadow streams one imagines when he
thinks of bamboo rods and fly fishing, but a very fishy place
nonetheless and a frequent test site for new flies and equipment.
Bass and bluegill are fairly abundant there and on a sunny early
spring day can be cooperative.
The very first fish to take my olive soft hackle was a five inch
bluegill. I was amazed at how well the rod transmitted the fishes
every action. Even with such a little fish I could feel everything.
Once a fish was on, it felt like a 3wt. I instantly fell in love. I
couldn't wait to get into a bass or something with a little size to
it in order to see what the rod could really do. It wasn't in the
cards that day, though the bluegills and baby bass kept me more
than entertained.
I almost took it with me to fish steelhead with Mike and Joe V.,
but it's a two piece and I wasn't able to carry it on the plane
with me so I left it at home. The spring wiper and white bass
run didn't cooperate with my work schedule very well, but as
spring ran into summer I added redears, larger bass, and
crappie to the list of species on the new bamboo. As I went
I learned what the rod could do, what flies it could handle,
and, more importantly, what changes I had to make in my
casting and fishing to get the most out of the rod. Even a
slow action graphite rod is completely different than the
deliberate, smooth action of that bamboo rod.
As the summer warmed up, I got more confident in myself
and the rod both and decided it was time to look for bigger
fish. I tied up a few crayfish colored clousers and headed to
one of the local spillways to see about a carp or two. Never
did get a carp, but on several occasions I found freshwater
drum willing to take a fly. I found that with a little side pressure
and patience I could land anything on the bamboo that I could
handle on any other rod I owned. The more I felt the balance
between power and subtle sensitivity, the more I began to
understand why those who speak of bamboo and fish it regularly,
speak in tones usually reserved for religion and poetry. It's also
difficult to fish bamboo for any length of time at all without feeling
yourself become more rooted in the history of the sport so that
casting can begin to feel like time travel.
In September, Marguerite and I took a long anticipated trip to
Northeast Iowa to do a little trout fishing. It would be her first
shot at trout on a fly and my first trout on the bamboo. Both of
us were successful, and I added brown, brook, and rainbow
trout to the rapidly growing species list. Starting a separate "life
list" in my mind for the bamboo was something that just sort of
happened. I'm not even sure when exactly it started, but there is
now a definite distinction between bamboo fly fishing and any
other kind. Not a snobbishness (at least I hope not) as I still
reach for the graphite rods fairly often when shorter, longer,
lighter, or heavier rods would do the job better, but definitely
a distinction.
Again the weather and my work schedule combined to delay my
pursuit of whites and wiper on the bamboo. The one place I found
the bamboo seriously handicapped me was in very windy situations,
and my days off in the fall seemed to always come with strong winds.
The winds were endured and fish were caught, just not on the
bamboo. Then, finally, there was a day, late in October, when
the winds were strong and the fish were absent, I decided to
retreat to a spillway where I would at least be out of the wind.
It was the same one I had caught the drum at in the summer.
There wasn't a lot of water moving through, but I thought maybe
a few crappies might save the day. It was also a good excuse to
get out the bamboo for awhile as well. For about the first hour,
small crappies were exactly what I got. I moved down to the tail
of a set of riffles and started exploring the seams hoping a few
larger crappies might be in these holding positions.
On the first cast, my streamer sank below the surface but then
the line immediately stopped. A rock? Maybe one of the many
line snarls the bait fisherman have left here? I lifted the rod to
see if I could free the fly and the line went tight and headed out
into the current. No rock, then, and probably not a crappie either
the way it was taking line. After a few minutes the fish rolled
close enough to see black stripes on silver. Finally! It turned
out to be a fat white bass. Not a really big one, but big enough
to put the pull on. That was the only white bass of the day, but
I did manage to find a few of those bigger crappies to finish out
the afternoon.
There were other trips and other fish, but soon came Thanksgiving
followed by the retail holiday season. The next time I looked up
everything was frozen and it was time to concentrate on tying flies
for next spring. Now the rod is sitting in the corner, next to
Grandfather's rod, where it has been recently joined by a
Phillipson Bamboo I picked up for Marguerite, impatiently
waiting for the start of another fishing year. Who knows what
theme will mark 2009 for future reference, but you can bet that
bamboo and fly fishing will be in there somewhere. ~ Tim Giger
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