Hatch-22: The Problem with The Pacific Salmon Resurgence

Here’s an interesting article:
The number of salmon in the Pacific Ocean is twice what it was 50 years ago. But there is a downside to this bounty, as growing numbers of hatchery-produced salmon are flooding the Pacific and making it hard for threatened wild salmon species to find enough food to survive.
Read the article here: […]

Herbert Hoover on Fishing

“That Presidents have taken to fishing in an astonishing fashion seems to me worthy of investigation. I think I have discovered the reason: it is the silent sport. One of the few opportunities given a President for the refreshment of his soul and the clarification of his thoughts by solitude lies through fishing. As I […]

Doug MacNair’s Cast Like a Pro

Doug has just given us rights to use his excellent tutorial on casting. Over the next few months we will be working with him to develop a casting document particular to casting bamboo. If you’d like to see these documents, just send me an email to david@headwatersbamboo.com.

To each his own…

Paul Schullery, in an essay of Arts and Crafts in his book Royal Coachman says:
“No matter how much attention and ornamentation we may lavish on it, a fly rod after all is just a stick.”
and
“I remember the first “classic” bamboo rod I ever saw, because I’ve never really recovered from the disappointment.”
Oh well, not my […]

DO NOT TOUCH — EVER!

A Jack Ohman cartoon in his book Fear of Fly Fishing shows a rod in a glass case with the following caption:
CANE ROD. DO NOT TOUCH. EVER.
His caption then says “who wants to fish with something they’re afraid to touch? Fishing with a cane rod is like playing rugby in your grandmother’s sitting room.”
Bamboo should […]

“Aren’t they awfully easy to break?”

“Rod makers like to point out that Tonkin bamboo does in the wild what it does in a fly rod–40 foot stalks of it bend in the strong winds and then snap back straight–and that bamboo has a higher tensile strength than steel.”
-John Gierach, Fishing Bamboo

From “the Suite”

“Now I knew. I knew “production rod” was a mild insult in the world of bamboo rods. It was like owning a Ford or Chevrolet in the company of people who drove Jaguars.”
-Frank Soos, Bamboo Fly Rod Suite
Ford or Chevrolet don’t mean very much today, but having a bamboo […]

Hoover: The Fishing President

As a boy, “Bert”, as Hoover was called, was fishing the Santiam near Salem, Oregon with worms, when an older fisherman gave the boy three artificial wet flies–a coachman, a grey hackle, and a professor–and encouraged the boy to abandon bait fishing.
The worm, the butcher-string line, and the willow-stick pole were now put aside for […]

I’ll stay with bamboo…

. . . “The subtle finesse that will put a No. 18 dry fly on a quarter at forty feet. The rod is all right, I suppose. It’s got power, but power alone won’t catch trout. I’ll stay with bamboo. It has grace, a soothing touch . . .
The old men collected fly rods the […]

Of brothers and fishing and bamboo…

“. . . Then from out of nowhere, my brother said, “Tell about the time you broke the tip on my new bamboo fly rod.”
-Howell Raines, Fly Fishing Through Midlife Crisis
Hope his brother likes the Headwaters rod he purchased to replace the broken rod . . .

keep looking »