Split Cane Rod Kits

[dlampert]

Hi All

Having been advised this 'Split Cane' thread was in progress, I have to chime in here, especially following Darryl's "inflammatory" statement - "as casting tools they are awful".

My guess, and correct me if I am wrong, is that most fishermen who have actually cast a split cane rod, and perhaps this includes Darryl ?, have probably cast one or two, at a push three, different ones at most. The chances are that unless, they were newish rods, these rods willl almost certainly have been of the 'down-and- across' super slow, heavy, wet fly rods that 99% of our grandfathers had and used. In South Africa you don't often see much else. I have certainly seen, and been asked to repair, a number of rods of that ilk and many that, quite frankly would be better in the fireplace than mounted above it. There are also a lot of other rod tapers out there that do indeed suck. I know because I have made and tried out some of them!

Hi Stephen, as you say all the split canes I have owned (still got 2) and cast have been older tapers more suited for kindling. I have wiggled Ed's new rod but have yet to fish it.

Whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with this it would appear that by all accounts the quality is dodgy and inconsistent. I personally would not judge 'split cane rods' in general based on experience of a Headwaters rod alone.

It's more a case of the guy who owns and fishes the rod is a bit dodgy and inconsistent Why don't we go out for a day and wiggle each others rods at some fish ? That way you will be better qualified to insult my 000wt and I will be able to insult your split cane just to get even.

Regards,
Darryl

[lekker trutta]

The only good thing about split cane rods is they look nice in photos - as casting tools they are awful !

You are kidding - aren't you? believe me nothing , NOTHING comes close to the feel of a well made Boo, don't believe me i'll send you one of mine just to prove the point. here's the catch - you like it , you buy it (cost of materials only [approx AU$400, retail AU$1300] not time, labour, postage) if not , you get to bag the Cr*p out of it on the forum & you keep/sell/destroy the rod, gratis. Thats how sure I am that I can change your mind.

Interested,

[KevinE]

I would happily take up that offer Mr Trutta - make mine a 7 1/2 ft for a 5 wt with a crisp dry fly action please

Seriously though, it is great to see some bamboo builders on board. You guys are real craftsman; one day I hope to be able to build a bamboo rod or 6.

[Korrie]

I would happily take up that offer Mr Trutta - make mine a 7 1/2 ft for a 5 wt with a crisp dry fly action please

Seriously though, it is great to see some bamboo builders on board. You guys are real craftsman; one day I hope to be able to build a bamboo rod or 6.

Hi Kevin
after having seen the amount of work that goes into building a split cane rod, rather just get one from Stephen Dugmore.
Go and visit him a couple of times while he is busy building your rod and have a beer with him.

Maybe Stephen can describe in brief how a split cane rod is made with the amount of hours it takes. Then all of us will appreciate the cost of a split cane rod.

How about it Stephen?

[dlampert]

You are kidding - aren't you? believe me nothing , NOTHING comes close to the feel of a well made Boo, don't believe me i'll send you one of mine just to prove the point. here's the catch - you like it , you buy it (cost of materials only [approx AU$400, retail AU$1300] not time, labour, postage) if not , you get to bag the Cr*p out of it on the forum & you keep/sell/destroy the rod, gratis. Thats how sure I am that I can change your mind.

Interested,

Hi Martin,

Generous offer mate, the question is by your own admission do you really know what you are doing ? Sending one of your "stuff ups" all the way to SA just so that I can turn it into kindling may be a bit expensive

3rd generation rod builder, 20 years experience and counting, countless split cane, fibreglass and graphite rods & the only thing I'm EXPERT in is stuff ups :-)

On a more serious note, do you have a website or some pics where I can see some of your work ? I typically like fishing a med - med fast actioned rod so even if your boo is the most amazing thing since sliced cane, it may not suit my casting action and I may not like it. I would be looking for either a 3wt or 000wt equivalent as these are the weights I fish most often.

Now I actually think that Sage rods and Abel reels are the biggest load of overpriced junk on the market - anyone from Frontier listening ? Send me down one at a third of the price and if I like it I will buy it

Regards,
Darryl

[NeilRowe]

Hi All

Having been advised this 'Split Cane' thread was in progress, I have to chime in here, especially following Darryl's "inflammatory" statement - "as casting tools they are awful".

My guess, and correct me if I am wrong, is that most fishermen who have actually cast a split cane rod, and perhaps this includes Darryl ?, have probably cast one or two, at a push three, different ones at most. The chances are that unless, they were newish rods, these rods willl almost certainly have been of the 'down-and- across' super slow, heavy, wet fly rods that 99% of our grandfathers had and used. In South Africa you don't often see much else. I have certainly seen, and been asked to repair, a number of rods of that ilk and many that, quite frankly would be better in the fireplace than mounted above it. There are also a lot of other rod tapers out there that do indeed suck. I know because I have made and tried out some of them!

But the fact is that there are some superb dry fly split cane rods out there that are totally different to our grandfather's rods and unless you have actually fished a good one (and not just cast it) you can't really make a sweeping statement about split cane rods per se.

Split cane rods are not for everyone. I am the first to acknowledge that. There are also a good number of fishing situations where a graphite stick is the business. But I personally believe that there is no substitute for a well designed split cane rod for fishing dry flies to spooky trout on clear streams. I accept that not everyone would agree with this but then not everyone has had the opportunity to put it to the test.

To a certain extent the idea that split cane rods are necessarily slow is also bunk. Let me give 2 examples:

One. I have cast the Sage 000wt (I admit I have not fished one) and I think it is a lousy rod. I sincerely believe that a split cane 000wt is superior, especially if you like a crisper rod. I'll tell you why. The trick with an ultra-light rod is that you have to get the rod to bend under minimal load. If you want a cripser action in the rod the bend has to take place in the tip. The problem with graphite is that it is a very stiff material and in order to get it to bend under a minimal load, as in a 000wt, you have to go very thin in the tip. Being too stiff, graphite can't be physically made to go thin enough. So what the designers have to do instead is to get the whole rod and not just the tip to bend. This slows down the action considerably. With bamboo on the other hand you can achieve the required bending in the tip which allows you to make the rest of the rod as stiff as you like. End result - crisper rod. I find the Sage 000wt 'pap'

Two If you want a rod to be super fast you again want the tight bending to be in the tip and the rest of the rod to be straighter. But if you also want the rod to be stiff and to recover quickly so that the tip doesn't wobble, how do you achieve this? If you take a broomstick, which is very stiff, and bend it under force, it will snap before it bends into a tight bend. In order to get a tight bend the broomstick has to reduce in diameter. The problem is that as it does so it becomes more and more floppy and there is not much you can do to adjust for this. You can change the modulus of elasticity to some extent but only within narrow limits. If however you use a rectangular section instead of a circular one you can make the section thin enough to get the bending and then increase the width to get the stiffness. The width can theoretically increase indefinitely to give you whatever stiffness you require without compromising on the way the section bends. You can make , and I in fact have made, rectangular bamboo rods. I haven't yet seen a rectangular graphite one.

Finally, before I bore you all to tears I have to say that the bamboo rod depicted in Darryl's photo is evidently a Headwaters rod. These rods are Chinese imports finished off in the States. Whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with this it would appear that by all accounts the quality is dodgy and inconsistent. I personally would not judge 'split cane rods' in general based on experience of a Headwaters rod alone.

Okay enough.

Cheers

Stephen

Stephen

Interesting points you have made. My rod is indeed a Headwaters. It is a 7' 4wt based on the Everett Garrison 201E taper. The blank portion appears to be of reasonable quality imho. The rod is visually true, the joint faces are uniform and no apparent gaps are present. The node work is ok. The rod was supplied with two tips and there appears to be no difference in appearance or performance between the two tips, which indicates that the QA/QC is reasonable. The "inferior quality" referred to by you (and by some USA rod builders) definitely refers to the grip and reelseat assembly. I have removed these cheap looking items and replaced them with Struble components. (These are visible in the photo).

I fished with Darryl on Saturday and swapped rods a few times (I also own and fish a SAGE 0 and 000 BTW). On the tight confines of the river we fished the 000 felt far superior to the cane rod due to it's extreme lightweight and excellent close in control. Saturday was an absolutely ideal day for the 000 though, as a gentle upstream breeze was blowing. In fact, I have never used my own 000 in such perfect conditions.

The EG201E taper is a medium action taper and used by casters who are used to fast action graphite rods it does feel strange. I grew up with glassfibre flyrods and slower action Sage rods of the 80's and I quite like the feel of the medium actioncane rod under certain conditions. It roll casts beautifully and there have been days on the Smalblaar (fishing with Chris S and DL) where the rod has been a revelation to me. I enjoy the feeling of fishing with equipment from a different era and the fact that, although different in feel, it is just as capable a fishing tool as my modern Sage rods.

I, too, would love to try a modern cane rod, but, like most people, the unavailablity of rods to test makes procurement of a cane rod an expensive hit or miss affair for me (especially if I cannot research the taper). Imagine spending upwards of R 5000 on a rod and ending up with a noodle (or a broomstick for that matter).

The Headwaters rod cost me in the vicinity of R 2000 total and, as such, was not too expensive an experiment. It obviously cannot be compared to one of your rods (or Lumert Wiechers' rods) but it's definitely not a bad rod. Good value for money, I would say. It's like a Vision of TFO compared to a pricier Sage.

[Korrie]

Stephen

Interesting points you have made. My rod is indeed a Headwaters. It is a 7' 4wt based on the Everett Garrison 201E taper. The blank portion appears to be of reasonable quality imho. The rod is visually true, the joint faces are uniform and no apparent gaps are present. The node work is ok. The rod was supplied with two tips and there appears to be no difference in appearance or performance between the two tips, which indicates that the QA/QC is reasonable. The "inferior quality" referred to by you (and by some USA rod builders) definitely refers to the grip and reelseat assembly. I have removed these cheap looking items and replaced them with Struble components. (These are visible in the photo).

I fished with Darryl on Saturday and swapped rods a few times (I also own and fish a SAGE 0 and 000 BTW). On the tight confines of the river we fished the 000 felt far superior to the cane rod due to it's extreme lightweight and excellent close in control. Saturday was an absolutely ideal day for the 000 though, as a gentle upstream breeze was blowing. In fact, I have never used my own 000 in such perfect conditions.

The EG201E taper is a medium action taper and used by casters who are used to fast action graphite rods it does feel strange. I grew up with glassfibre flyrods and slower action Sage rods of the 80's and I quite like the feel of the medium actioncane rod under certain conditions. It roll casts beautifully and there have been days on the Smalblaar (fishing with Chris S and DL) where the rod has been a revelation to me. I enjoy the feeling of fishing with equipment from a different era and the fact that, although different in feel, it is just as capable a fishing tool as my modern Sage rods.

I, too, would love to try a modern cane rod, but, like most people, the unavailablity of rods to test makes procurement of a cane rod an expensive hit or miss affair for me (especially if I cannot research the taper). Imagine spending upwards of R 5000 on a rod and ending up with a noodle (or a broomstick for that matter).

The Headwaters rod cost me in the vicinity of R 2000 total and, as such, was not too expensive an experiment. It obviously cannot be compared to one of your rods (or Lumert Wiechers' rods) but it's definitely not a bad rod. Good value for money, I would say. It's like a Vision of TFO compared to a pricier Sage.

Is that a Bogdan reel?

[NeilRowe]

Korrie

No, it's a copy of a Vom Hofe reel made in China somewhere. Got it from Headwaters as well. Also a cheapy. The quality item in the whole set-up is the JP Thebault silk fly-line.

[Korrie]

Korrie

No, it's a copy of a Vom Hofe reel made in China somewhere. Got it from Headwaters as well. Also a cheapy. The quality item in the whole set-up is the JP Thebault silk fly-line.

What is the quality of the reel like?

[NeilRowe]

Looks nice in photos! Noisy.