Harry Boyd

Harry with a nice grayling on the Talachulitna River in Alaska


Tying flies at the 1999 Southern Rodmakers Gathering. I organize this gathering each year. In 1999, we had 74 rodmakers from all over the world in attendance.


One of my deluxe model rods.

No one ever said it better than Norman Maclean, "In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing..." For me, that is certainly true. I am a minister and build and fish with bamboo rods in my free time. Handcrafting fine bamboo fly rods one at a time in my small garage workshop is more than a hobby, more
than a labor of love, it is almost a spiritual experience. John Gierach says it well in Trout Bum: "... fly fishing is a sport in which fish are caught properly only in a certain way, often against all odds, and using rods made from a weird kind of grass that grows in China ... it seems somehow appropriate."

Several years ago, I bought a used Leonard fly rod from one of the major dealers.
For once in my life, I got the best end of the deal. Dreams of bamboo fly rods had danced in my head for as long as I could remember, and I fell in love with the gentle rhythms and sensuous look, feel, and smell of that old rod. Hundreds of fish were lovingly drawn to hand with that old 50df, and I loved it more each time I hooked another fish. That old rod just felt right.

Anyone who loves something that much naturally sings it praises. One of my fishing friends took my bragging seriously, and asked to try out that piece of old Hiram Leonard's handiwork. We swapped rods for a few hours that afternoon, and that was a mistake. You see, my friend liked the old Leonard as much as I did. And he simply had to have it. He paid dearly for it. I made quite a nice profit, and decided to buy myself another bamboo rod.

Little did I know that even with the profit I made, I was still far short of what was needed to buy a decent classic cane rod. I searched for months, and never found a rod in my price range that grabbed
me. About that time, a young man in our flyfishing club showed up for a meeting with a bamboo rod he built. I had tied my own flies and built my own graphite rods for years. My thinking was, "If Doug can do it, so can I!" Thus began an odyssey of nearly a year's worth of searching out tools, techniques and time.

Old rod makers refer to building one's first rod as a "thousand hour journey," and that's not much of a stretch. The first rod I built has a funky looking Garrison style grip, and goofy node spacing but it isn't for sale, at any price. It casts well, and looks okay, and though I don't often show it off, it's still special to me.
Something about it just feels right.

Harry Middleton has one of the characters in The Earth is Enough try out a new-fangled
fiberglass rod in a small town hardware store. As a confirmed bamboo man, he wiggles the new fiberglass rod a few times then throws the entire line with one backcast. He reacts by telling his admirers that he just doesn't feel the trout in that rod. Something about a bamboo rod just feels right.

Something also feels right about joining the GFF staff. A desire for quality, an intention to help, and the hope to provide only the best in fly fishing information fits well with my desire to build the best rods ever made.

Harry Boyd,
August 2000

fbcwin@3g.quik.com or
maker@canerods.com
canerods.com

Harry's articles

Jan 1. 2002

Harry Boyd

GFF's own bamboo rod expert and maker of these beautiful rods. Best known for his extremely popular series on making your own bamboo rods.

Oct 12. 2002

Bamboo part 1

Harry Boyd tells us "Since Hiram Leonard and the earliest days of fly fishing in our country, the allure of fine spilt bamboo rods has been part of the magic of our sport." Read Harry's introduction to his series of articles on building bamboo fly rods.

Oct 13. 2002

Bamboo part 2

Harry Boyd continues his series on the construction of bamboo fly rods with a look at selecting, preparing, and splitting your culms of tonkin bamboo.

Oct 14. 2002

Bamboo part 3

This is the third section of Harry Boyd's continuing bamboo rod course. Here we begin to mold the raw bamboo into something that approaches the shape and form of a fly rod, and the real fun begins. Read more in Part 3 - Staggering Nodes and Rough Planing.

Oct 15. 2002

Bamboo part 4

Split cane: In the fourth installment of Harry Boyd's series on bulding bamboo fly rods, he describes the tools and processes of binding strips together and then heat-treating them in some sort of oven.

Oct 16. 2002

Bamboo part 5

Harry Boyd teaches us the tools and techniques required to turn strips of bamboo into tapered sections of a fly rod in Part 5 of his continuing series.

Nov 1. 2002

Making grips II

There are two basic strategies for building a cork grip for a fly rod. The first involves gluing the rings directly onto the rod blank and then shaping the grip. Another way involves gluing the cork rings together off the blank, and then shaping the grip in a lathe setup before reaming and fitting to the rod blank. That process is described by Bob Petti in this article.

Nov 13. 2002

Bamboo part 6

Now that we have our strips of bamboo tapered into sections for our fly rod, the next step is to glue these strips together into whole rod sections.

Aug 23. 2004

Bamboo part 7

Follow along as Harry Boyd takes us through the process of trimming the bamboo blank to the proper length, preparing and mounting your ferrules, and adjusting the fit of the ferrules. Many thanks to Harry for this well received series of articles.