Smith Pentalux® Rods

About The Maker: Rob Smith began building bamboo fly rods in the late 1990s and his first original tapered rod in 2001. Having built a variety of traditional 4, 5, and 6 sided fly rods, he made the first Pentalux® rod in 2007 and has been evolving the design ever since. Rob's taper preferences are directly influenced by the many classic rods he has had the opportunity to own over the years. Rods from such makers as Paul Young, F.E. Thomas, Jim Payne, Everett Garrison, Robert Crompton, and others. Those that were most pleasing to cast and use were well documented and added to an ever increasing private library of fly rod tapers. His building style and continued development in the craft was greatly influenced by a gifted old three-ring binder that housed the rod making manuscript of noted rod maker Robert W. Crompton, the earliest known maker of 5-strip bamboo fly rods in America. Smith published a book on this extremely influential rod maker in 2018 that is titled: Robert W. Crompton: Father of the Five Strip Bamboo Fly Rod. Through the research on the book he became friends with Jim Uslan the son of famous rod maker Nat Uslan, the first to ever offer five-strip bamboo fly rods commercially. Jim shared many of his fathers original tapers as well as Lou Feierabend's modified taper charts along with those that Nat originally received from Robert Crompton himself. These taper charts have had a distinct influence on Rob's designs. Currently finishing up a new book on The Uslan Rod, with the research for combined with owning all of Lou Feierabend's remaining bamboo rod stock, there are likely very few rodmakers who have spent more time studying pre-embargo built five-strip bamboo fly rods. There is undoubtedly even fewer who have a better understanding of classic and modern taper designs particularly as they relate to the asymmetrical fly rod. More information can be found on the maker in the book Radical Rodmaking: Innovative Bamboo Fly Rods & Their Makers, with Chapter 6 on Rob Smith.