Your Antique Getaway

Beyond a doubt the best fly fishing rod material is good bamboo properly selected, cured, split, glued, and correctly proportioned. It possesses strength combined with lightness, resiliency, pliancy, power and balance in greater degree than either steel or solid woods.

Formerly anglers and rod makers could draw fine distinctions between male and female Calcutta and Tonkin " canes," but under present conditions good Calcutta is very rare and the word " Calcutta " is be¬coming merely a trade term. Good bamboo of all kinds is more difficult to obtain and a good piece of Tonkin is better than an indifferent one of Calcutta. Male Calcutta, however, is supposed to be superior to either the female or Tonkin. The cheapest split cane is known as steel vine or African cane. It is light colored and makes up into good, inexpensive bamboo fly fishing rods.

Perhaps the most important piece of fly fishing gear you will need to choose is your fly fishing rod. Though fly fishing is a simple art, it is a precise one. When reading the riseform on a river trout, you will need a rod which you can depend on to cast a precise cast - not wide of your intended area, nor falling short. You will also need to know that when you get in deep to the mountain streams, your fly fishing gear will not fail you and break down at that critical moment.

If fly fishing is itself simple in practice (though not easy!), the world of fly fishing rods is not. Gone are the bamboo rods of your forebears. The technology in fly fishing rod engineering has exploded, and there are a plethora of choices to choose from.