Beyond a doubt the best fly fishing rod material is good bamboo properly selected, cured, split, fixed, and correctly proportioned. It has strength mixed with lightness, resiliency, pliancy, power and balance in larger degree than either steel or solid woods.
Previously anglers and rod makers could draw fine excellences between female and male Calcutta and Tonkin “canes,” but under present conditions good Calcutta is extremely rare and the word “Calcutta “is starting to become simply a trade term.
Good bamboo of all sorts is tougher to get and a good piece of Tonkin is far better than an unexcited one of Calcutta. Male Calcutta is meant to be much better than either the female or Tonkin. The least expensive split cane is commonly known as steel vine or African cane. It is light colored and makes up into good, cheap bamboo fly fishing rods.
We say that you know that bamboo is split and then fixed together to employ the hard outer enamel and cut back the diameter of the pieces. Some rods are made from bamboo split into 6 sections (hexagonal) and some in 8 (octagonal) but the 6 strip construction is more frequently used.
Some makers claim the 8 strip, being more just about a real cylinder, has got better action but this looks to be more unproven than practical, while the little tips of an 8 strip rod are probably going to be “soft” thanks to the comparative quantity of glue important to hold the pieces together. 8 strip rods cost more than the six strips and if the angler would like a round bamboo fly fishing rod they’re preferable to the 6 strip planed down as planning definitely must harm a rod. As a general rule a well-made 6 strip rod leaves small to be desired. A novelty in bamboo fly fishing rod making is what is often known as the “double built “rods which are made from 2 layers of split and fastened bamboo, one in the other. They’re heavier and powerful, and it is claimed, holds their shape better, than normal rods and are favored for sea and salmon fishing but nonessential, I suspect, in single hand fly rods. A British creativity is the steel center rod which is composed of a good piece of well-tempered steel running as a core thru sections of regular split bamboo. The makers claim this construction gives a rod of superior casting power with only of an oz. added weight. Buddies who possess rods of this type are avid suitors of this construction for heavy fishing. A Yank maker supplies a rod of “twisted bamboo “which he claims equalizes the strain and produces better action.