THE SPLIT BAMBOO ROD 133 



The extracts and comments which follow 

 will, I believe, be read with more than passing 

 interest by the young anglers, few of whom 

 have ever seen a four-strip split bamboo or, 

 as our British cousins call it, split cane rod. 

 And yet, it was only ten years ago that I 

 watched with interest the making of four-strip 

 rods by one of the old-time gunsmith-rod- 

 makers of the Middle West. 



Through the kindness of Hugh T. Shering- 

 ham, angling editor of the Field of London, I 

 have succeeded in obtaining the following 

 from " Fishes and Fishing," by W. Wright 

 (London, Thomas Cantley, 1858) : 



" In 1805 I became acquainted with a Welsh 

 gentleman, Mr. L., whose description of fly 

 fishing for trout and sewin fired my imagina- 

 tion, and I determined to become a fly fisher. 

 ... At my request he (Mr. H., not Mr. L.) 

 introduced me to an old Welshman named 

 David Williams, whom Mr. H. had drilled 

 into making rods according to his plan; this 

 Williams was acquainted with Clark,* the un- 

 rivalled maker of glued-up bamboo fly rods, 



* Mr. Sachs said of Clark : " I have endeavored to find 

 out who this Clark could have been, but even the assist- 

 ance of one in the forefront of the trade, who can com- 

 mand tradition going back eighty years, could produce 

 nothing definite. The only Clark was one living at n 

 St. Johns Lane, Clerkenwell, but tradition does not re- 

 cord him as a maker of built-up rods." 



