Fishing rods

[Fiskadoro]

Rods or fishing poles?

In the old days everything was a pole, but when I was a kid fishing in Texas you heard both. The general rule was glass blanks were rods, cane poles for crappie fishing, snook poles and surf rods built from Calcutta were called poles.

Cane poles were light weight cane used for bank fishing.



Snook poles were made from a plantation grown high density bamboo that came from I think the Yucatan. I don't know why but everyone called them Calcutta poles.

For snook you'd rig a short piece of wire to a jig or lure which you'd the drop "Doodlesock" around bridge and pier pilings at night.



No reels with that rig, you'd hook the fish and bounce them up on the pier.

Back in the day it was very hard to find a heavy blank over ten feet long that wasn't extremely expensive so we took big twelve an fourteen foot Calcutta poles and wrapped surf poles with guides reel seats "varmacs" and twine for grips. I could not find a picture of one but it was old school.

When Fenwick and Harnell came out with more big blanks the price dropped and everyone eventually went to glass, but I still remember back in 1973 when I had both: two twelve foot Calcutta's and a 542 Harnell.

They were the first big rods I wrapped, and I took them by the baitshop in Corpus where I got the bamboo. The owner looked them all over and said nice poles, but that is one hell of a nice rod. Like I said bamboo were poles while Harnells and Fenwicks were rods.


I eventually broke the two poles on fish as they would fatigue over time, one on a bull red and the other on a blacktip, but still have that Harnell...


.....just snapped that pic, still with the original grips and reel seat 37 years later.

Damned if I know what to use it for these days, but I still like the thing anyway.

So that's my take. Bamboo poles, Glass, Graphite, composites, rods

Jim