Bamboo Fly Fishing

Bamboo Fly Fishing

Bamboo or synthetic for fly fishing?

This is what is known as a Loaded Question. This question is often answered by very strong opinions and almost religious devotion.

Also, the lack of detail in your question makes it somewhat more difficult to answer well. Are you shopping for performance, overall experience, value? What kind of fishing do you do? These details would help to give an informed answer.

In terms of performance, graphite is the best all-around material for fly rods. It's very light, very strong, and it's very very resistant to bending, which gives it a "bendable stiffness" that allows for very accurate and long-range casting. It will also maintain its performance traits for zillions of repetitions. Not only is bamboo softer and more bendy, it will also lose its resistance to bending over time. Bamboo is an excellent material for fly rods, but fiberglass and graphite rods were developed to improve upon the performance characteristics of bamboo, and they did. That's all that really needs to be said. A lot of people will say that a well-made bamboo rod has certain, indefinable qualities, but that is a question of overall experience, not objective performance. If you put the best bamboo rod and the best graphite rod in a test of elasticity, durability, weight, strength, etc., the graphite rod will win.

For an overall experience, you may find that bamboo is a finer material. For one thing, if you get a high-quality bamboo rod, it will likely be custom made for you. This is very rewarding, or I would imagine it is (I don't have any kind of custom rod). Knowing that there is not another rod exactly like yours would be a great thing. There is also something special about using "primitive" gear, made of natural materials, and getting the same results as from contemporary gear made from manmade materials. I would never deny that nostalgia is an advantage of bamboo rods. Similarly, I like to shoot archery, and I much prefer my hardwood longbow with homemade arrows to any equipment that contains fiberglass, aluminum, etc. However, when it comes to fly fishing, I will only move to bamboo after I have figured out everything I want to learn from graphite rods. I know I am going to take a hit in performance when I move to bamboo, so I want to be as good at casting as I can be. I also want to wait until all my kids have left the house before I drop $1000+ on a bamboo rod -- I don't want there to be any chance of them breaking it. Heh heh.

Regarding cost, it is probably easier to get a high-quality graphite rod for a "reasonable" price than a high-quality bamboo rod. You can get a pretty nice graphite rod, for instance, for $200-$300, while a bamboo rod at the same price point would likely be of low quality. Bamboo rods costing $3,000 are not uncommon. You can throw thousands of dollars at either kind of rod, and you can cheap-out on either kind, and I wouldn't recommend doing either one of those. Shop around, research, try out as much as you can, and then get the best gear you can afford without being excessive.

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