Today's world is a constant race. Lack of speed and a weak desire for upward mobility are seen as an impediment. Faster, stronger, newer, are the catch words of our day. In light of that, I consider myself lucky to have discovered a way to rail against such foolishness.

If you closely examine the newest fly fishing magazines and catalogs, you will find more and more equipment that is guaranteed to make you cast farther and faster. You will see a trove of tools that simply cannot be lived without. Strategically posed anglers with the latest in necessary gear cradle gleaming leviathans in their arms as if to suggest that if we will spend the money, we too can be space age anglers who retrieve record sized fish at every outing. The day that slick advertising and cheap foreign labor started courting the fly fishing community, a vital part of the sport was effectively laid to rest, and one of the most common reasons for fly fishing in the first place was placed in a lock box and pushed under the bed to gather dust bunnies along side lost socks and worn out shoes.

Fly fishing was in the beginning, and still is for me, a very slow, reflective, quiet, and to a certain degree, romantic past time. The basic tenants of Fly fishing are still the same. A gurgling brook or singing river, wading as slow and unobtrusive as your fumbling feet will allow, and the cast. A long, slow back cast that hangs motionless for a moment before you roll the line out on the water, the fly dropping on or under the surface with the force of a whisper. When I think fly fishing, that is what I consider to be the foundation of the sport.

I guess that is why, for me, bamboo is not a way to fish, it is the ONLY way to fish. To cast a well made bamboo fly rod, one that very well could be older than your Grandfather, is the true essence of the reason I started this journey in the first place. It causes me to slow down, relax, and enjoy. I own several "boos", and though some are of greater renown than others, I enjoy each one of them.

Please don't think that I am trying to be elitist; I own and am not to good to use a graphite rod. But when someone from a New York Ad agency that no doubt has never stood in the middle of a stream is trying to mix the subtle wink and nudge of a car salesman into a sport that traditionally has been a way to escape such things, all I can do is shake my head.

My Grandfather once said, "Sometimes it takes a long time to get over fools hill", and when I see people sinking money into equipment that will be outdated before the new is worn off of it, I look in the corner of my fly tying room at the modest collection tubes that contain rods that were built before I was born, and I understand just what he meant. Why invest in the new? After all, the river is older than you can fathom, and I trust that it has served you well.