I opened up the annual Cabela’s fly-fishing catalog yesterday and was pretty shocked to see them offering a split-cane rod. If they had them last year, it escaped me, but it was quite a suprise. Not that I’m saying Cabela’s sells crap and has no business offering cane rods – far from it.
I went through the phase of declaring them the evil big-box fishing monolith killing mom-and-pop shops, but they’re pretty damn cheap and convenient and that usually wins me over more than a higher populist calling. [It also got politically confusing when I was urged to boycott Wal-Mart, which sells fishing stuff and competes with everyone else, including Cabela's. It's endless. As Larry David said: "You just can't go outside anymore."]
But I love fishing with cane rods, mostly because my casting is atrocious and the heavier cane rods slow me down to the point where I’m not cracking a bull-whip with the fly line. I’ve got a few old Heddons that are in good shape — nothing fancy by any means, but decent enough where I pulled out an 8-weight two years ago on a steelhead trip and our guide issued an emphatic rejection of me using it in his boat. “No f-ing way I’m going to let you f- up that rod with these insane fish,” he said mid-head shake.
Fair enough.
Cabela’s is selling rods from Highland Mills Rod Co., which appears to be the reincarnation of the Tea Stick Rod Company, a six-year-old outfit out of West Virginia. John Gierach wrote a nice little book about bamboo rods and their history and utility a few years ago. Cane rod-making is one of the rare areas of craftsmanship these days that holds tight to tradition and even mystique, and it’s nice to see a kind of renaissance for wooden rods.
So cane is going a little more mainstream, it appears. Whaddyaknow.
Posted by gjhaze 
