By Allen Crater
Once a teacher, always a teacher.
I’m sure I’ll take plenty of heat for the admission, but my favorite method of chasing trout is working the banks, woody cover and deeper buckets with a fast-action fly rod and gaudy streamers. Nothing gets my heart pumping like the aggressive take of a big brown on a #4 hook tied with marabou and a little flash. There, I said it.
Having said that, I’ll also admit watching a hungry fish smack a dainty dry fly bobbing along a bubble line on a warm June evening brings its own pleasure. A couple years back, I decided to focus on my dry-fly game to slow both myself and my fishing. To be more present and in touch with the moment, the river and the time-honored traditional aspects of the sport. I wanted to have a go at fishing bamboo.
For almost a hundred years, up until about World War II, if an angler went fishing and was serious about their sport, they carried a split-bamboo fly rod. Think Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It,” and you’ll get the idea. But these rods went largely out of style with the advent of modern materials—becoming collector’s items or antique decorations versus tools of the trade.
As someone who learned the sport fishing graphite, a bamboo rod always held some mystery—representing one part art and one part function, and I had always been enthralled by the craftsmanship and attention to detail that went into making them. In many ways, they’d seemed a bit too pretty, almost demure, to take out on the water—like that beautiful side-by-side safe queen I never really want to bust brush with while chasing Michigan grouse. And then I fished with one. It’s hard to explain, but there really is nothing quite like the feeling of fighting a big trout on a well-made bamboo rod. It’s something you need to experience to truly understand.
My buddy, Jason Veeneman, is a high-school teacher by occupation and a bamboo rod builder by passion. We have spent countless hours together on the river chasing salmonids, in the woods chasing birds, and on the road chasing places yet explored. So, when the time came to finally pull the trigger on having a cane rod built, Veeneman was my first (and only) call.
“I got into rod building because once I caught a fish on a bamboo rod, I wanted one. Needed one, actually,” Veeneman explained.
“Back in the early 2000s, I met a gentleman on the river who let me cast one of the rods he had built, and (pardon the pun) I was hooked. But, after researching how much a handmade rod costs, I realized that my ‘need’ might remain a ‘want’ for a while on my teacher’s salary. Still, I just had to figure out a way to get my hands on one of those grass rods. So, being relatively handy, I researched how to build one myself. I quickly realized that acquiring all the tools, going through the trial and error, and the steepness of the learning curve were all more than I had the patience for.”
“At that point, I needed to find a mentor to make this dream a reality. After reaching out to some friends in the fly-fishing world, I was given the name of Ron Barch, and he became one of the greatest mentors anyone could ask for. Ron had built a reputation for teaching the craft to newbies like me, and I quickly knew I had found the right person. The rest is history.”
And that, after a long and circuitous road, finally brings us to the true hero of this story, Mr. Barch.
Veeneman had long spoken of Barch, and I knew I wanted to meet this interesting gentleman. So, on a warm evening this past August, Veeneman and I made the drive to Hastings so that I could finally meet Barch and tour his shop.
Barch has a gray beard, a cheery smile, and lively eyes. A professorial type with a woodsman’s bent. Like a wise Greek philosopher in a well-worn flannel. Interestingly, Barch was a teacher for 35 years, starting at the George Washington Trade School in Detroit before moving to Lake Odessa where he taught shop, math, social studies, and woodworking. It seems teaching has always been in his blood.
As a teenager, Barch grew up in Hazel Park fishing the Clinton River with his brother and fondly recalls camping and fishing at Ambrose Lake “up north” with his family. With his long love for the sport, he has been working with fishing rods for nearly 30 years, first assembling fiberglass and graphite blanks, and eventually graduating to making split bamboo fly rods. Over the years, he has developed his angling skills by traveling to fish throughout the U.S., Canada, and (don’t ask)…Cuba.
Barch uses his experience as an angler when selecting tapers and construction methods, enabling him to construct split bamboo fly rods that function exceptionally well and enhance the angling experience. While the rods he builds are undeniably beautiful, the important thing is how they cast.
“A cane rod’s whole reason for existence is to cast a line in a pleasing and efficient manner,” he explains.
His rod-making process follows a series of choreographed steps. First, he carefully hand-splits pieces from the culm (stalk). Once that is complete, he must shave each piece precisely to create the proper taper. After that, the shaved pieces are glued together. Then comes the finishing steps of smoothing out the joints, adding hardware and wraps, signing and numbering, and finally varnishing. It’s time-intensive work, averaging 50-70 hours per rod. These days, Barch builds about a dozen rods a year. “The key to innovating in the bamboo rod world is knowing where you want to be. How you get there is what makes a true craftsman,” he says. “I’m always learning.”
The craftsman gene seems to run in Barch’s family. His father was a well-known furniture refinisher for Englander Furniture, and his brother was both a furniture maker and an antique dealer. So, you might say, Barch came to the craft naturally. However, like Veeneman, Barch also had a mentor, Wes Cooper, from Fremont, who was one of the founders of Trout Unlimited.
“Interestingly enough, the gentleman who let me cast that first bamboo rod on the river was Barch’s mentor, a man by the name of Wes Cooper, for whom an award has been named for his contributions to sharing the craft with others. Every year at Grayrock Rod Makers Gathering, someone who exemplifies Wes’ augmentation of rod building earns that coveted award. In 2018, the recipient was my mentor, Ron Barch. It all comes full circle,” Veeneman shared.
Beyond the tutelage of Cooper, Barch draws some of his influence, particularly as it relates to tapers, from another vaunted Michigan rod maker, Paul Young, who is considered one of the classic masters of the craft. Like Barch, Young was a restless artisan who pushed the boundaries of fly rod design. Young’s signature tapers were known as parabolic. Among the most common Paul Young fly rod models were the Parabolic 15, Midge, Perfectionist, Martha Marie, and Driggs, which is one of Barch’s favorites.
Young designed the Driggs River Special after fishing the Driggs in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where his beloved eight-foot Para 15 was too big a rod for the stream.
The Driggs was meant to enable the angler to delicately fish small flies, but still offer the strength to haul a heavy fish away from submerged roots.
The rod Veeneman built for me was based on a Paul Young Para-14 taper, with a few modifications to accommodate my less-than-delicate casting style. Building off ideas from these forerunners, modern rod makers like Veeneman and Barch are producing split bamboo rods that equal or surpass the work of earlier artisans by using contemporary methods and materials.
“Tonkin cane, through selection and tempering, can be fashioned into rod sections which are as fast and varied as other rod construction materials,” Barch instructs. “Add to this the use of modern adhesives, which lend stiffness and speed to the blank, and a lot of things change.”
“Bamboo rod blanks are admittedly not as stiff as graphite, but when properly designed, certainly more so than fiberglass. But why modern tackle makers have chosen to manufacture synthetic rods as stiff as pokers is beyond me. Stiff rods wear me out! They aren’t much fun to cast. By the end of the day, my arm hurts, and their unforgiving tips break off good fish. Quote me on that one.”
Spending a couple of hours with Barch, it’s easy to pick up on his passion for the sport, his love of the craft – both the history and the continued innovation – and the joy he gets in bringing along new people who appreciate the medium. Once a teacher, always a teacher, I suppose.
On top of everything else, Barch is an excellent writer, and I can think of no better way to conclude this column than with Barch sharing some of his own words in a piece he wrote entitled “A Place for Rod Making.”
This evening, there is a chill in the air, a quiet, clear, blue softness and sandhill cranes offer their guttural call to the setting sun. Tonight, I will clean the shop and begin to plane a bamboo fly rod.
If I had my way, the workshop would be set apart from the rest of the world, hidden somewhere away from highways and telephones. It would be more than a shack but not quite a building, just a place for those who understand the joy of making something for the simple pleasure of doing it. Rod making is one of those pleasures, and one’s surroundings, if chosen properly, can enhance the experience.
My ideal workshop would rest on a hill overlooking a trout stream. If the site were on a bend in the river, all the better. A mixture of pines and poplars would encircle the clearing, with hardwoods growing higher up the river valley. By early December, snow would already begin to bank against the shop walls, and winter nights would be as cold and crisp as the snap of a tippet saying goodbye to a hefty fish.
It goes without saying that my dream shop would be constructed of slab siding or, better yet, cedar logs. The walls would enclose one large room, with rafters open to the ridgepole, and I’d store cane up there, along with rod cases and maybe an old pair of skis.
Over on the south wall, overlooking the workbench, there would be a good-sized window where the rod maker could look up now and then to watch the snowshoe gate of a winter grouse or the stretching of a deer for higher boughs. A single power line strung down a lane from the main house would provide electricity, and, in the corner, hooked to a solid split stone chimney would be the wood stove, providing warmth and cheer and a place for the coffee pot.
For those times when I’m watching the percolator bubble, or a friend stops by, I’d have a couple of seats, one for me and one for my guest. For my leisure, I’d provide an ancient oak stool whose rungs are worn by years of work shoes pressed against it.
For the occasional visitor, a cast-off kitchen chair, usually piled high with junk, would suffice. In this place, comfort would come from companionship and conversation, not the furnishings.
Upon entering, one’s first awareness is the aroma of cane shavings and oil from a whetstone blending with the smell of woodsmoke and a damp wool coat. The light is a little dim, except over by the bench, but it’s an easy place to get used to, a nice place to be. In this rod-maker’s haven, one will find the time to dream and plan and craft things for next season, next year, and yes, even for the next generation.
To learn more about Ron Barch, discuss a custom build for yourself, or learn to build your own rod, visit his website at aldercreekangling.com.
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