Fishing Gear. What were they saying about it way back when?

PIKE-TACKLE. SPINNING AND TROLLING-RODS.

An idea — happily now nearly exploded — has prevailed amongst trollers since the time of Nobbes of the Dark Ages, that a pike-rod should necessarily be a clumsy rod — a thick, unwieldy, weighty, top-heavy weapon — in fact, a sort of cross between a hop-pole and a clothes-prop.

Whatever our pike-fishing ancestors may have been in the matter of skill, it cannot be denied that their rods and angling gear generally were in every way vastly inferior to our own, and, indeed, such as to make any display of what we should consider science out of the question.

On no part of the fisher’s equipment has more patience been lavished, with the result of greater advances, than on the all-important item of the rod. That so far at least as trolling-rods are concerned there was plently of room for improvement may be gathered from the receipt given for the construction of a trolling-rod by the authoress of the ‘ Boke of St. AIbans,’ about A. D. 1486, wherein the implement in question is recommended to be of at least fourteen feet long ; the ’staffe’ or butt measuring ‘a fadom (fathom) and a half,’ of the thickness of an ‘ armgrete,’ or about as thick as a man’s arm, and the joints to be bound with stout ‘ hopis of yren ‘ (iron hoops)!

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In the first volume I have given a description of the different woods used in rod-making, and I will not therefore repeat it here, the more so as both hickory, greenheart, and ash — that is, almost all the principal rod-woods — may be, and are, very commonly employed in the manufacture of Spinning and Trolling-rods.

The wood really most suitable for the purpose, and which as time goes on will, I have no doubt, come to be more and more used, is bamboo. This wood possesses in a special degree the qualities required for a spinning-rod, being both light, strong, and of sufficient stiffness, and, it may be added, pliability also, for the most perfect ‘ casting’ of a spinning bait and for the ‘ playing ‘ of it when it has been cast.

I daresay many trollers — much better fishermen than I am — will warmly, not to say hotly, dissent from this proposition. Every angler has his own hobby on the subject of rods. One man swears by a bamboo rod, another by lancewood or hickory, and a third would lose half the enjoyment of his day’s sport if it were not to be effected by his trusty greenheart of early and well-beloved associations.

Its owner might say, and say with truth, ‘ The difference you speak of in weight is exceedingly small, and there is a certain ” swishiness ” and elasticity in greenheart or hickory which is not to be got out of the most carefully selected bamboo.’ I find myself that I get quite as much play, or ‘ swishiness,’ as I want out of a four-jointed bamboo rod with a greenheart top, and as regards weight, the difference, slight as it is, tells decidedly in favour of the hollow wood.

From the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes

edited by His Grace the Duke of Beaufort, K.G.

BOOK TITLE

Fishing by H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, London, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885, pp. 8-9

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Wikipedia has some good material on fishing gear. Click on Wikipedia: Fishing Rods