The Other Side of Bamboo

Bamboo flyrods are a little like herpes.

Both are achieved out of lust, which, in the light of day, provokes a certain retrospective guilt.  Both, once acquired, invoke the sort of awe that elicits careful handling, and be it split-cane rod or irritated genitalia, the newfound host might find himself wondering “damn…  should I even touch that thing?”  Perhaps most importantly, both can prove terrifically hard to get rid of.  That said, a bamboo fly rod is also often quite beautiful, and valuable, and typically created at the hands of someone who cares deeply for the craft and its requisite tools, and the gesture of quiet loveliness that throws a feather-wrapped hook at a fish.

Incidentally, I don’t have herpes.

I swear.

I got into bamboo the same way and for the same reason most of my contemporaries did; it was John Gierach’s fault.  As my introduction to fly-fishing took place in the early 80’s, I never could claim that my first rod was made of cane, or even that the fellows who taught me the ropes were proponents of bamboo. Rather, I thrashed around with noodly glass rods and then tent-pole graphite numbers until, as a teen, I stumbled upon Gierach’s work.  I was hooked at once, and still find myself believing most of what the man puts down in print, but as a kid it was all pure gospel.  Upon completing “Fishing Bamboo” I made two solemn vows:  to move West at the end of school and never, ever, to sully my hands with another graphite rod.  The descent was rapid to say the least.

In the end, I guess, my failure was only partial.  I moved to Vermont for awhile, and then returned to my native Massachusetts to take a job and raise a family and realize what I still perceive as an admission of defeat.  The inland trout fishing here is not what you’d call spectacular, though native brookies do still spawn in forgotten, sub-developed trickles.  But to my second pledge I have remained largely faithful, and over the years I’ve worked diligently to fill a quiver with bamboo rods far finer than a man of my age and stature should be allowed. 

So here, in the first blush of middle age, I find myself at an impasse.  Money, once earned greedily the hard way, in hourly jobs that split my hands and held the reward of a good rod and cheap beer and some aimless time on the river, has become something different.  It puts shoes on children’s feet and insurance on cars and pitiful dents into credit card bills that grow quietly bigger nonetheless.  And the rods in the corner get somehow more valuable, as I wonder why the hell I can’t sell one, in the spirit of just catching up.  But then again, those rods may just be the start of a college fund, of retirement, of a salvation I’ve not yet needed and may never need, and therefore must be handled gingerly, maybe even squirreled away in a locked closet.  And I wonder where the value lies in something that grows increasingly more valuable, but scares you all the more just to hold in your hands. 

I fish the rods I’ve got, though not the way I used to.  The whimsy of a tiny trout on a thousand dollar rod no longer makes me feel like a guy who’s got it all figured out.  And maybe that’s just what growing up is, sad though it may be.  But the questions still itch a little, and I still scratch away at them, looking down at the rod in my hands and wondering “how the hell did I wind up with this anyhow?”

First Published in The Drake