Trout Grass

If fly-fishing is a way for people to tune in to their passion, then the fly rod is their antenna. Cane rods connect people to the river like no other material can. This film shows not only how a bamboo fly-rod is created, but why. Starting in the bamboo forests of Southern China, we watch as 30' bamboo culms are harvested, slid down hillsides, loaded onto primitive wooden carts and transported to the roads or rivers below. Witness one of the legends of the craft, Mr. Hoagy B. Carmichael, as he visits for the first time, the land that served as the origin of his seminal book on bamboo rod construction (A Master's Guide to Building a Bamboo Flyrod written in 1973 with Everett Garrison). Learn what is needed in a piece of bamboo that will be transformed from a $10 piece of grass into a $1,500 lightening rod. From the misty hillsides of China into the dusty confines of a workshop in Montana... Watch master rod-builder Glenn Brackett break down the mystery of constructing a split-cane fly-rod as he converts a twelve-foot by two-inch circle into six-strip wonder machine; a device capable of making grown men swoon... and big browns run and hide. Hear from writers Tom McGuane and David James Duncan as they fish these rods on Montana's Boulder river. McGuane, a bamboo rod veteran and Duncan, who hadn't fished bamboo in forty years, get together for the first time ever on a river to experience and discuss the nature and lore of bamboo rods. See how a legend is born.