Akimaru 7-foot 6-inch 4-weight, 2-piece Bamboo Fly Rod

Japan is an exotic land of contrasts, from the serenity of a tea ceremony to the chaos of Shibuya crossing, where 2 million pedestrians cross the street every day. The differences can be vast, but hard-coded deep into the Japanese psyche is a universal appreciation for simplicity, precision and quality. 

From Shuichi Akimaru, a master builder of bamboo fly rods, comes the “HEXA” 764, a 2-piece, six-sided (hollow) 7-foot 6-inch 4-weight fly rod hand-built in Fukuoka, Japan. Aki is a true Japanese master craftsman, who for over 47 years has been perfecting, in his words, “fishing tool”–fly rods constructed of Watake, also known as native giant Japanese timber bamboo. Watake is less forgiving to craft into fly rods that its Chinese cousin Tonkin is, but when executed well, it produces an incredibly powerful fishing tool with a delicate feel that verges on the spiritual. As bamboo itself is a living organism, it’s been said that rods built from Watake maintain their own soul. This one certainly does. 

Unique to the HEXA is a 6-sided internal ferruling system, developed to minimize the rod’s weight, while extending consistent flexibility throughout the entire rod. The hand-rubbed oil finish is stunning, the wraps are expectedly precise and the overall feeling this rod imparts to one’s hand is both anticipation and serenity, strength and flexibility, yin and yang.  

Aki’s craftsmanship doesn’t come lightly. He estimates that it takes 400 hours, significantly longer than his competitors, to build a two-tip rod. Since beginning, Aki has built over 700 rods in his shop.

Bamboo Fly rods are, admittedly, an extravagance, one that finds its way to those who value the aesthetic and feel that only a rod made of grass can produce. For those who do, the feeing produced is remarkable.  

To field test this rod, I fished a HEXA 764 for three days during the cherry blossom season in Japan. We would fish extremely technical water, with dry flies, on long leaders, sight fishing for large suspicious rainbows (fish that averaged over 20-inches), trophy yamame and the odd brown trout, which we learned is considered a destructive species and not highly prized. The fishing required accurate casts, often made in the wind, at distances of up to 60 feet. To eliminate drag, we started with 14-foot, 6X leaders, which occasionally grew, due to drag, to 16-feet. 

When landing fish, the HEXA 764 performed extremely well. I was pleased with the bamboo’s crispness and the way the fly line and casting tempo quickly found the rod’s sweet spot. The rod even proved capable of landing a 10-pound fish on an emerging mayfly–providing enough pressure to efficiently land a fish of that size. The HEXA was capable of doing everything we asked on the river.