Building Bamboo Fly Rods

Our passion for fly fishing goes well beyond our adventures on the water and many times brings us into the shop where we enjoy building custom bamboo fly rods. Using classic, and in some cases 100-year old tapers, we take a culm of fine bamboo and strip it down, plane it, dress it and dip it into one of the finest pieces of functional art you can have on the water. If you've never fished bamboo, you are truly missing out! There is nothing that places and presents a dry fly like bamboo. It is the most natural, and by the way, most durable product in the world. My gosh in many Asian countries bamboo is still used today as scaffolding!

Many critics will say bamboo is fine for dry fly fishing, but we are here to tell you it works just fine as a suspension nymphing setup too. Sure, if I'm out west and fishing heavy, heavy rigs I'm not using bamboo. But for what we do most of the time, bamboo is the way to go!

Is a bamboo rod heavier... sure, but when it comes to fighting fish... especially big fish... the natural flex in a bamboo rod protects tippet like no other. 

Test... step on a graphite or glass rod and scrunch it around with your foot and see how well it holds up... now do the same with a bamboo rod... yeah, you'll still be fishing that bamboo rod for 100 years my friends! 

Like all things, it's about having the right tools for the right approach... we love our graphite too!

We do not buy blanks... we do not sell blanks... we start from the plant itself and work it into functional art!

Bamboo Fly Rod Rebuilt Rough Beveler

Wild Bearings - The Art of Making Fine Bamboo Fly Rods

Bamboo Fly Rod Making - Preparing the Culm