The bamboo for a Real Rod is harvested days before it is hand crafted into a fishing rod. Since bamboo is a plant and contains moisture, we must put it through a special curing process to ensure strength and beauty. Our process extracts 90% of the moisture out of the pole. Your rod will continue to loose the remaining 10% over time. You may even see slight changes in the color of the rod as it dries out. If the rod doesn't retract back to the straight position after you catch a fish, you can easily bend it back into position by gently applying pressure to the opposite side of the bend. This means that moisture is still present in the rod. The rod will become more rigid and hard as the moisture leaves. Heat and humidity can also impact the rod. The rod will retain less moisture on a cool dry day than on a hot humid day. To reduce the moisture level in the rod, thus making it more firm, leave it out in the sun for a couple of days. Make sure the rod is perfectly straight when drying. Be sure not to overexpose the rod to sun or it will become brittle and break. After a couple days in the sun, be sure to apply the wood protection and conditioning formula. It is recommended that a coat of the wood preserver is applied to the rod once or twice a year with special attention being given to the nodes. Make sure rods are stored in a way that will not put pressure on them. For example; Stand them straight up in the corner of a room or lay them flat on the ground. Within six months most of the remaining moisture should be gone. The bamboo Real Rod should continue to perform throughout the full curing cycle.
Fishing with bamboo is a greater challenge than graphite because it is a big piece of woody grass. It is less predictable than prefabricated material such as graphite or fiberglass. As is the case with all materials, it can break if you put too much pressure on one area of the rod. We advise anglers to employ a sweeping hook set rather than a straight up and down hook set with bamboo. The idea is to evenly distribute the weight over the entire rod rather than in one area. If too much pressure is quickly put on one single bamboo node, the chances of breakage increase. Fishing with swimming baits such as crank baits & spinner baits puts less strain on the rod when hooking a fish than say, setting the hook with a plastic worm. The rod can handle both, but you should be conscious of your rods strengths and limits. Bamboo is very strong and should not break while fighting a fish if you keep your drag set properly. With the proper drag setting you can land just about any sized fish as evident by the giant 28 lb catfish caught on a Real Rod in 2008. Check out the AMAZING VIDEO of the catch.
