Bamboo fishing rods are a cool, handcrafted blast from the past with more than 25 hours of labor in each one. Contemporary bamboo rod makers tend to focus on fly fishing rods–but why shouldn’t conventional fishermen enjoy fishing bamboo as well? Sixty years ago all respectable fishing rods were crafted of bamboo and today we are bringing that same opportunity to you.

What’s this all about, anyway? By pledging your support of this project, you are pre-ordering a bamboo casting rod at a huge discount. Our projected retail price for these rods is $500 so backers of this project will get rods at over 50% off (we’re covering US shipping too). See backer reward options on the right for details.

These rods make great gifts and at this price, you may consider more than one. If you’d like to give a rod as a Christmas gift, we’d be happy to provide a gift certificate. Please add a note when you place your pre-order.

When will backer rewards ship? Your pre-order will be initiated at funding of this project. Rods typically take about 4 weeks to build, so we’ll ship by the middle to end of January based on total volume ordered and where your pre-order sits in the queue (so order early!). We’ll provide weekly build updates until all pre-order rods are shipped.

What makes these rods unique? Each rod is painstakingly hand-split and hand-planed of genuine Tonkin bamboo, and then formed into the iconic hexagonal blank–a 5-1/2 foot, light-action, browntone casting rod.

Here I will describe the process of making my first bamboo fishing rod, with a few photographs. Some of the stages, particularly the lacquering, I was unable to photograph as I had my hands full; also some of the tools and techniques are trade secrets that must remain in the workshop. For beginners it is usual to start with a rod for either madai (red snapper) or shirogisu (Japanese whiting) with a bamboo body and fibreglass tip. Since I go fishing for whiting much more often than for snapper, I went for the latter type. The first step is the selection of bamboo; there are many varieties, of which about six or seven are used for rod making. My teacher showed me a variety from his stores, which is bamboo which has been cut and then dried for a number of years. So long as the bamboo is kept free of burrowing insects, it can keep for decades; some of his best bamboo is from his own late master, whose stock dates back to before the War. Unlike bamboo ‘cane’ that is split and fashioned into rods in the West, bamboo is almost always used whole for Japanese fishing rods.