he use of cane in rod making has a longer history than most people think; Hardy mentions a belief that Indian Army officers may have brought back bamboo for rod-making as early as 1700. Lack of experience with the material meant that these early rods were heavy and very stiff, which explains their lack of success. On the other hand, the virtues of smaller diameter cane sections were so clear that "solid" cane was frequently used for rod tip sections, the only problem being the rarity of long sections that lacked knots. Perhaps it was this knowledge that caused rod manufacturers to look again at split-cane as a way of solving their problems.

The first use of split-cane for any part of a rod was made in about 1801, when it was used four-section split-cane tip sections made from planed and glued cane, wrapped with silk. Rod builders confined their ambitions to building cane tip sections for quite some time. It seems likely that rods with split cane tops were in reasonably common use by 1845, although the quality varied a great deal. By the middle of the century, split cane was in widespread use for building rod tops and even complete rods, but hickory and lancewood rods were more common and the popularity of greenheart was growing. The major problem with split-cane was its expense; a cane rod typically cost several times as much as the equivalent greenheart. Greenheart was a far easier to wood to work, and produced lighter rods with far better action than three or four strip split-cane of the period.

Deciding who built the first rod entirely from split cane is a difficult matter. It is possible that Ustonson was building split-cane rods as early as 1830, this is likely to have been a "solid" cane rod, built of the widely used 'Calcutta' bamboo, because these were widely available at the time. By the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851, Aldreds, Bernards and Farlows had three-strip rods for sale, but it is not clear whether any of these rods had split cane butt sections. Other suppliers, including Blacker, were quick to market three strip rods, but they did not exactly set the market alight. The British angler's penchant for greenheart meant that the initiative now moved to America.

The first four strip split cane rod was made by one Samuel Phillippe, in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1845. Phillipe built his first six strip split cane rods in either 1848 or 1849. The new design was clearly so superior that by the mid-1870's, six-strip split-cane manufacture was in common use for quality rod building in the United States. British fishermen had to wait rather longer, the first hexagonal rods being marketed in the UK by Allcocks as late as 1879. In 1883, Hardy's and Farlow's exhibited six-strip split cane rods at the International Fisheries Exhibition. The reason that split cane took so long become popular in Britain was that a large percentage of the early American exports were of extremely poor quality, which earned the material an undeservedly bad name. It wasn't until the British tackle makers began to make their own hexagonal split cane rods that greenheart began to lose its place in the hearts of British fishermen, but by then the Americans had seized the lead in rod design, and the man who led the Americans was Hiram L. Leonard.