Joy of Cane

I'm way too late in getting this posted, so I apologize to all you thousands whom I've kept waiting, biting your nails over when the new bamboo rod would arrive. (See post immediately prior).

About a week after that last entry, one day the UPS van pulled up. It was a Tuesday, I believe. The UPS guy and I are on a first name basis. Around here it gets kinda quiet at times. Most days it's just me working in the studio wearing my usual rubber gloves, rubber apron, gas mask and goggles, while out on the lawn the dog is laying around waiting for someone to drive up with a biscuit. That would be the FedEx guy, the US Mail lady, my husband, and of course the UPS guy, Brian. It's always a pleasure for my dog to hear that diesel engine, and he announces his excitement in very clear and repetitive terms. If I hear the noise and I can get away, I like to greet the arrival, since it means, well, human contact. So on this Monday I was able to do just that. Brian threw a biscuit to Mason as I approached the truck and in the next moment I got a glimpse of what he was delivering.

To say that I lept into the air and clapped my rubber-gloved hands would be an understatement. I howled and danced while pointing to an elongated cardboard box: "You know what this is?" I sang. "It's a bamboo fly rod!!"
"Really?" said Brian in his polite tone that I often take for evidence of his supreme tolerance of nut jobs.
"No, you don't understand!" I said, wringing my rubber apron for emphasis. "My friend made this rod for me. He made it. For me!"
"Oh, okay. That's cool." He nodded and handed me the box.
"You have no idea how cool." I said, receiving it into my arms like the infant Jesus. "No idea."
Brian checked boxes on his electronic tablet and threw Mason another treat.
"You've got some great friends, then, huh?"
"You bet," I may have said. It's hard to remember this part. We probably said goodbye, have a nice day, or some such. Next thing I know I was back in the house and opening the box at the kitchen table with a utility knife.
It was all going very slowly, though. I wanted to savor the experience.
Inside the box was a lovely polished stainless steel rod tube with a brass screw cap. Inside the tube was a crisp new twill rod bag, and inside the bag was the rod. The rod.

Just that previous Friday, about 4 days before, I had gone fishing with its maker. We'd arranged to meet in Grayling and fish a certain tract of river on private land that he had access to (his is a charmed life of gaining such charmed accesses -- but more on that another time). Down at the river he explained that the rod he was using was "sort of the big brother" of the rod he was making for me.
"Well, in that case, may I try it out?" I asked politely. Mind you, I'd known this guy for a while, but it was mostly via phone and email, with maybe a once-a-year social at a flyshow. Not only had I never fished with him so far, I had never, as I mentioned in my last post, really -- I mean really -- cast a split cane bamboo rod. But here I was, about to be the lucky recipient of I don't know how many man-hours of artful labor and design -- and while itching to try it out, I didn't know how to explain that bamboo qua bamboo might all be lost on me. Maybe, so my fear went, I was too dull witted and oafish a caster to appreciate the virtues of cane. But how do you tell that to a guy who has been working for months on such a project? "Gee, I sure do 'preciate your hard work, but maybe I oughta stick with fiberglass."
Casting the "older brother" in front of its maker would surely expose me for the rube and fraud that I was. But that kind of truth could not, I knew, be held in for long, so I figured I might as well be out with it. Give it here. Step aside. Let me show you how oafs do things.
Once on the water I cast stupidly, showing multiple baroque tailing loops all up and down the river. Yeah, I was nervous, but also I was surprised how it struck me as heavy. It was a 7 1/2 foot 5 weight, but was in my hand a little, well, more "wooden" than I had expected, especially in the butt. I moved the rod back and forth in the manner of someone casting a fly rod, but it was hard for me to understand what I should be doing: getting used to the weight, improving the loops, getting the timing right, waiting to feel the load - or all of the above? Because hovering above my interest in "feeling" the cane, I wanted not to look like a crappy caster in front of my friend.
"May be," he said from the bank, "It's a thing to get used to without someone watching."
"Hmmm," I agreed, concentrating to no avail.
I false cast more, eventually offering that I was probably having a hard time "getting used to" the difference between it and my 9' 5 weight Winston OM6.
Graciously my friend allowed as much, and presently we were each in possession of the rods we had come with.
That didn't stop me from badgering him on the subject, however. By which I mean gently interrogating to determine if there was a chance in hell I might have what it takes to appreciate viscerally (as opposed to theoretically) the qualities of a cane fly rod. In the end I guess I came away with no more information in my head than before, but a lot more in my vocabulary. More importantly, we had a nice afternoon fishing.
So when I slid those two pieces out from the twill pockets of the slender rod bag, I was ready.
My friend had told me about impregnating the rod instead of using several coats of varnish. He'd told me about the color of the silk for the wraps. He'd send a picture of the reel seat and handle in the making.
And here it was, in my hands...in person.

I ran upstairs to my "fishing closet" and got out a couple of reels that I thought would have a 4 wt. line on them. It didn't matter how dopey the reels were, how old the lines; I just wanted to cast the thing. "...I strung up two choices," I wrote in an email later that night. "And cast happily out on the lawn. It's beautiful in my hands -- I love the timing, and the feel--as in, I can feel it load and that feel agrees with me and my style of casting. It's just wonderful. "
For a longer time than usual that evening, I stayed outside casting on my lawn, all alone, no one watching. It was a cross between a first date and a sacrament. Because it really was everything you read about: the rod knew my mind before I knew it myself. It was forgiving and steady and soft and lovely. Just like the holiest of evenings out on the river.
In the weeks since it's arrival, I've fished with it twice. Caught a lovely 10 inch brown up on the North Branch one evening with another friend and bamboo-nut looking on. Then the other night again, caught a few browns almost exactly where I tried out the big brother version. It was a magnificent evening and a great date with a wonderful rod. I feel as though this is going to lapse into poetry, so I'm going to stop writing.