Art of the Possible
THE COLLABORATION BETWEEN A WORLD-CLASS BUILDER AND AN ANGLER WITH A VISION RESULTS IN A REMARKABLE SPLIT-CANE FLY ROD
IIt is a hot, airless September afternoon in the Catskills, the transitional stretch of that month when corn maze signs appear and swaths of summer birds begin to vanish. I’ve traveled to fish a favorite pool on the Delaware’s West Branch, and while you never need a reason to go fishing, this trip is special. Accompanying me is a new and unconventional piece of tackle: a split-cane fly rod that represents an extended collaboration with one of the world’s great builders and a personal, 40-year light-tackle odyssey. It is a piece of equipment I believe could alter the sport.
Despite being a tailwater, the river is unusually low. Following weeks of drought, its mile-long flats resemble millponds, and the unseasonable heat has trees releasing leaves early. They patter down softly, like raindrops leading a front, the effect pleasant if vaguely discordant. We are down to minutiae and 7X tippets and the wariest fish of the year.
While midstream shimmers, the bank I’m scouting is heavily shadowed, overhung and protected by interwoven branches of spruce, hemlock and oak. Springs also trickle in here, and the air smells sweeter and feels notably cooler. My eyes bracket the gloom, searching for the dimple or crease that could spell a trout. That’s how you fish this reach of water — shift an inch or two, stop, scan, repeat — the only way that’s really effective. One of the finest anglers I know, John Shaner, a lifelong habituž of the river, refers to the process as “oozing up a bank.”
The rod I’m fishing was built by Per Brandin. Of six-strip, two-piece construction, it measures 8 feet and carries a 2-weight fly line. It marks the fifth and final ideation of a concept we began testing a year ago. The color of a burnished, freshly opened chestnut, the rod is hollow-built from butt to within a few inches of the disconcertingly slender tips (among the finest its maker has ever fashioned) and is a study in purposeful lightness. It has a skeletal reel seat and shortened grip, both entirely ventilated, and is finished with microferrules, light wire guides and shortened wraps. Overall weight is a trout scale above 2 ounces. Of a type, it’s among the most rigorously considered, aggressively parsed tools ever fashioned. The effect in hand is extraordinary, a rare equipoise of touch and delicacy with unusual precision. Quite literally, nothing like it has ever been built.
Why create such a rod?
A technical response would go: While the featherweight line relates it to a category of “midge” tackle, its greater length allows far more function. At 8 feet and longer, you gain considerable line control, both on the water and in casting, and the additional leverage aids in fighting and playing fish. The full-flexing design also neutralizes the lunges and exertions of a hooked trout, and will more successfully accommodate the ultra-fine tippets and smaller flies so popular with modern anglers.
All of that might constitute the “official” reason. A more valid response might be, Why not? Lancewood rods measuring 12 feet and weighing as much in ounces were once considered appropriate tackle on a trout stream. Pushing limits is what keeps things interesting.
This unusual piece of gear marks a radical step forward in a noble, if eccentric, lineage of “Far & Fine Off ” bamboo construction. Long considered slightly unorthodox, rods of this nature are true thoroughbreds and represent a particular style of building that requires very particular skills. Though the first in their line is hard to pinpoint, as a series the concept originated in the late 19th century with Hiram Leonard’s remarkable Catskill and Fairy Catskill rods. These achievements represented the apogee of that day’s rod maker’s art, after which the idea trickles down through, and is periodically refreshed by, various shops and innovative builders, among them Hiram Hawes and F.E. Thomas.
This tackle has always proved more popular in concept than in use, and for every such rod
made, few were ever fished. The majority of these, through mistake, misuse and miscreants, were damaged or broken, and surviving examples in good condition are rare. I’ve been lucky to own, fish or cast intact examples by the aforementioned craftsmen and found the rods to be extraordinary instruments. However, as relates to contemporary fishing, the trout fly in the ointment is the unavoidable fact that they were designed for other purposes in other times.
Though hallmarks of the builder’s skill, the typically noodley, hyper-delicate character of most light, vintage fly rods 8 feet or longer suggests another intent. As a general rule, most were conceived as genteel wet fly rods. They may be adapted to dry-fly sport with varying degrees of success, but it’s a tenuous graft. Their use in any serious manner today requires a level of skill or masochism so great as to preclude the sane.
Which isn’t to say many haven’t tried. For both fly fishers and builders alike, the allure of the difficult for its own sake remains a powerful one. Fishing is a sport, after all. Innumerable trout have been spared the indignity of capture by anglers attempting to utilize such aberrant, demanding tackle. Likewise, history’s scrap bins overflow with failed attempts at this uniquely frustrating angling concept. Yet, as when reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, profound frustration
can occasionally betoken enlightenment. Or, in this case, a finer presentation.
Of course, I wanted one. Where would we be without our manias? For reasons of sportiness, to test and gauge myself against the tackle (hopefully improving my timing and competence), and in accord with the teachings of respected authors and mentors, I sought this quixotic creature as avidly as Pellinore pursued the Beast Glatisant. Thus began a quest.
Spanning three decades, opinions received from the many tackle authorities I consulted ranged from mildly pessimistic to outright hostile. “That’s why they invented graphite,” or
“It’s not what bamboo was meant to do” were typical ripostes. As orthodoxies go, they were right. Putting aside the pure whimsy of a 2-weight line, simply building long and light in the material presents inherent problems. A split-cane rod’s solid mass develops considerable momentum in use and frequently becomes erratic, leading to uncontrollable vibration and fluctuations. Too much weight in the upper portion of a rod, too little governing it. Many makers used the term “impossible.”
There were flashes of hope. In the 1980s, the brilliant Tom Maxwell took an interest, and we chatted at length about the possibility of constructing such a rod, actually discussing a