headwatersbamboo.com

Hatch-22: The Problem with The Pacific Salmon Resurgence

admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:51:51 +0000

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: http://e360.yale.edu/feature/hatch-22_the_problem_with_the_pacific_salmon_resurgence/2335/

Herbert Hoover on Fishing

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:14:54 +0000

“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 have said in another place, it is generally realized and accepted that prayer is the most personal of all human relationships. Everyone knows that on such occasions men and women are entitled to be alone and undisturbed.

Next to prayer, fishing is the most personal relationship of man; and of more importance, everyone concedes that the fish will not bite in the presence of the public, including newspapermen.

Fishing seems to be one of the few avenues left to Presidents through which they may escape to their own thoughts, may live in the own imaginings, find relief from the pneumatic hammer of constant personal contacts, and refreshment of mind in rippling waters.”

Herbert Hoover, Fishing for Fun and to Wash Your Soul

Doug MacNair’s Cast Like a Pro

admin — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:09:07 +0000

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…

admin — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:09:08 +0000

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 experience but you can’t please everyone.

DO NOT TOUCH — EVER!

admin — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 21:28:45 +0000

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 be fished. Fish bamboo.

“Aren’t they awfully easy to break?”

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:51:54 +0000

“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”

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:31:44 +0000

“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 rod that you feel like fishing is something worthwhile. We hope you take the opportunity to just try bamboo. It’s something you just shouldn’t miss out on.

Hoover: The Fishing President

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 18:30:33 +0000

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 a bamboo pole with the fly tied directly to the end of the line. Hoover, arguing for simplicity and efficiency, claimed that the action and the “potency” of the bamboo pole and fly exceeded that of all other methods.

Taken from Hoover the fishing president, by Hal Elliot Wert

I’ll stay with bamboo…

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:43:33 +0000

. . . “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 way small boys collect marbles or baseball cards. Emerson had ten rods. He looked after them as though they were his children. Even cleaning them in the evening boosted his spirits. He and Albert never considered bamboo rods as things. No, they were the inanimate creeping toward life, wands as full of excitement, chance, fortune and agony as the natural world.”

-Harry Middleton, The Earth is Enough

Of brothers and fishing and bamboo…

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:45:36 +0000

“. . . 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 . . .