“A yadake rod has a totally different casting feel than a rod made from Tonkin bamboo. You cannot cast a yadake rod as you do a Tonkin rod. Yadake is way softer than Tonkin, but you can still make a tight loop. Once you are used to this feeling, you cannot go back to Tonkin. After hooking a fish, you will be brought to another world. Some users want a #4 or #5 weight rod because they fall in love with the feeling of yadake. But I cannot make them. If you like fishing at a big river or chasing big trout, you have many choices from Tonkin bamboo rods or even graphite rods. Yadake bamboo should be used in the small river to fish smaller fishes. There is nobody who uses a heavy rod for tiny tanago. (Japanese bitterling. Tanago fishing is another treasure of Japanese traditional fishing using a four-foot long wazao. The cosmetics of wazao for tanago fishing is sometimes more gorgeous than is needed for a two-inch fish. Each material must have the best length and weight.) We don’t need to compromise. As you choose a graphite rod for steelhead fishing, you can choose Tonkin for rainbow trout, and yadake for yamame trout or perhaps for brook trout in the eastern USA.”
*This article was extracted from “Mostly Bamboo” by courtesy of the author.