Mary Ann and I just got back from Boise and the 2014 Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo sponsored by the Boise Valley Fly Fishers. We had a great time there and met a lot of great folks very interested in bamboo fly rods. Here we are at our booth at the show:
Our booth at the 2014 Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo
Mary Ann also gave a casting demonstration on the do’s and don’ts of fly casting…with a bamboo rod!
Mary Ann giving a casting demonstration at the 2014 Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo
I recently started on another Hollow-Built Bamboo Switch Rod. I though it would be fun to document my process along the way, so here are some early photos. First, the bamboo is selected and split. For this Switch Rod, four pieces of matching bamboo were used.
Each piece of bamboo is split into 18 to 20 pieces.
Splitting into narrow strips.
The strips for the Butt Section and Mid Section are done. The Tip sections still need to be split.
After heat treating, the bamboo strips are roughed out into a triangular shape on a Bellinger Beveler.
Hand Planing gets the strips down to the final tapered dimensions.
Each strip on the Butt and Mid Sections get hollowed with scalloped cuts on the inside edge.
– The planed and hollowed bamboo strips are then glued together using Unibond 800 adhesive and a Bellinger Binder.
The thread holds the strips together under a constant tension until the glue cures.
A good friend and fellow bamboo rod builder (Skip Hosfield) sent this to me. I’m not sure who developed this procedure so I can’t give him/her the credit they deserve…it works quite well.
1) Accurately measure the distance from the rod tip to the front of the cork grip (not the entire rod length). Divide that number by 10. Example: 96″/10=9.6
2) Clamp the rod grip to a table so that the rod is horizontal next to a wall. Mark the position of the tip of the rod on the wall. Put a paper clip through the top of a small plastic bag and hang the paper clip and bag to the tip of the rod. Slowly add small weights (coins, washers, nuts, etc.) to the bag until the tip flexes down exactly 1/10 of the measured rod length: Above example 9.6″.
3) Remove the plastic bag, paper clip, and the weights you’ve added and weight everything on a gram scale. Example: Paper clip, bag, and coins collectively weighed 20 grams.
4) Divide the measured weight by adjusted rod length to get a grams/length ratio. Match the ratio to the recommended line weight in the table below: Example 20 grams/9.6″=2.1. This rod is about a 5 wt. rod.
Ratio Recommended Line Weight
1.4 – 1.6 3
1.6 – 1.9 4
1.9 – 2.2 5
2.2 – 2.6 6
2.6 – 3.0 7
3.0 – 3.5 8
3.5 – 4.2 9
4.2 – 5.0 10
Mary Ann and I took one of my Bamboo Switch Rods out recently on the Metolius River and the Deschutes River, swinging for larger trout or steelhead. We experimented with several different leader set-ups and flies on a Snowbee 4/5 Switch Line. This 10′ 6″ 5 wt rod worked extremely well with AirFlo Intermediate and Super Fast Sinking (4.9 inches/sec) Polyleaders with unweighted or moderately weighted streamers and intruder-style flies. Though we didn’t hook up on any larger fish, we still have a great time. Here are a couple of photos:
Casting on the Metolius River
Swinging for Deschutes River Steelhead
Our summer season in Stanley, Idaho is nearing an end but we’ve still had a little time to get out and fish. Mary Ann and I hit a local spring creek, Bear Valley Creek, a few days ago. While you don’t normally get huge numbers of fish at Bear Valley, the ones you do get are often very nice. We picked up a few nice fish on hoppers, with small nymph droppers. Here is a shot of Bear Valley Creek, and two of the fish we caught.
Bear Valley Creek, Idaho
A nice cutthroat taken on a #8 Dave’s Hopper.
A beautiful 18″ cutthroat that took a #14 lightening bug.