With all the cold weather and snow we have right now, we’ve been catching up on some old “to-do” items. We spent a few days last May at Yamsi Ranch in Southern Oregon fishing the headwaters of the Williamson River. It’s amazing fishing for highly educated rainbows and brook trout on spring creek water…requiring long, light tippets and plenty of stealth…perfect for bamboo fly rods. Here is a little video of Mary Ann stalking and catching a nice rainbow one sunny morning.
Tag Archives: fly fishing
Building a Hollow-Built Bamboo Switch Rod – Chapter 1
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.
More Bamboo Switch Rod Casting
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
Bamboo Rods on Bear Valley Creek in Idaho
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.
Fly Fishing in Stanley, Idaho
I haven’t posted in quite a while. That’s because I’ve been in Stanley, Idaho all summer just hanging out, doing lots of fishing, and continuing to work on my bamboo fly rods. Mary Ann guides here for Silver Creek Outfitters, www.silver-creek.com , from June 15th through Semptember 15th on the Salmon River. While I’m here, I’ve been writing a fly fishing report on a blog at www.flyfishingstanleyidaho.com . Check it out to see what fishing here in central Idaho is like.
