"Fishing with a cane pole can be a lot of fun. You haven't had a thrill until you catch a two-pound bass on one. That's a fight any fisherman would enjoy." That's how one fisherman I read about earlier today described his recollection of those early days.
Also came across a fella who remembered his brothers and him going cane-pole fishing with their dad when the boys were just kids.
"Sometimes on a Sunday afternoon," he recalled, "we'd get in the Rambler (Remember those old Nash Ramblers? I do, even though there was only one in my hometown back in the day.) and ride out to a pond or creek somewhere. All we had were bamboo poles and green cotton line, with a red-and-white painted bobber. That's how Dad did it. He wanted no part of any reels or fancy equipment. He'd just bait up with a worm or a minnow, sit down on the ground, watch the cork, and maybe haul in a fat bluegill...sometimes a catfish or a bass.
"And I can remember being too young to fish but excited just to be there," noted the fella. "Even today, I think about those days when I would see the bobber at the edge of a patch of reeds, bouncing once, twice and then going out of sight, each time knowing...or hoping, at least...that a big one was on the other end.
"Fifty-some years later, my dad and brothers were all gone, but I still was getting on the water, throwing every kind of lure and bait with spinning and casting rods, and buying more gear than I could use. I also remember the exact day when all of that changed.
"It was summer, and my buddy, Harlin, and I just had put a little john boat in at the Sycamore Creek ramp in Cheatham County, and it took me two trips to get all of my stuff out of the truck. I got into the boat with three rods, two tackleboxes, an ice cooler, and a sweat towel. As I sat down, I realized I didn't have enough room to move my feet. I couldn't help wondering why I hauled all this stuff around when most of it never came out my box. 'Why spend so much time fiddling with equipment?' I asked myself. At that point, I became enlightened and resolved to change.
"From that day forward, I have discovered the perfect tacklebox. Someone who doesn't fish would think of it as just a Band-Aid can, but no, it's so much more, and it's all you really need. The basic setup includes a few hooks and split-shot sinkers in little plastic envelopes, and one or two each of the two essential creek-fishing lures: a No. 5 original floating Rapala and a 1/16-ounce brown Rooster Tail spinner. There's also some room left over for a few soft baits and a jig head or two if you feel like it that day. With the box in your shirt pocket and a light spinning rod laid alongside one gunwale, you're ready to push off in your canoe for a day of fishing adventure." (Reminds me of ol' Woo Daves when he used to give seminars at the annual Richmond bass show. He always had a pocket full of rubber worms and told everyone that's how he routinely carried them.)
Finally, there's this account from a guy who started fishing tournaments back in the 1960s, when the rules were few, and the competition was fierce.
"We used 14-to-16-foot boats, with a 40-hp limit and a 17-pound-thrust trolling motor," he said. "A depthfinder was a tree limb pushed to the bottom. Most guys had a few favorite lures and used them everywhere."
He went on to describe a tourney he fished at Lake Wappapello, a very shallow lake in Missouri with lots of trees and laydowns. It was a draw tourney, where the backseater was an amateur. The boater described the day like this:
"My draw showed up wearing bib overalls, a farmer's hat, work boots, and worst of all, a 12-foot cane pole," he explained. "He had all his tackle in a small sandwich bag. I never said a word...lots of folks in the area were poor then.
"Once the gun went off, away we went. The fish this day were living near the shore, behind the trees and laydowns. I was concentrating on trying to get my lure behind the laydowns, which was anything but easy to do. I had to throw my lure up in the air, as though I was punching grass, and try to feather it on the way down...not exactly easy with the gear I had back then.
"I was so busy with what I was doing I hadn't had time to pay any attention to what the farmer on my backseat was doing...until I heard a big splash and looked back just in time to see him with a 5-pound bass. It was then I said to myself, 'You'd better watch what this ol' boy is doing.'
"I immediately noticed he was using a topwater bait. He would drop it over the laydown with that long cane pole and then swish the lure around. When a bass hit, he would jerk it out of the water, back over the laydown, and there would be a big splash as it hit the water.
"Over the course of that one-day tourney, the farmer probably culled 40 bass. Meanwhile, I only caught two keepers. When someone lays a whipping of 50 to 2 on you, the feeling you get is that of being a beaten dog. I didn't even want to go to the weigh-in because of the embarrassment.
"I asked the guy what it was that he was doing, and he explained that it was called 'doodle-socking.' Not long after that, it was outlawed from tournaments." (My research indicates that "doodle-socking" indeed was banned at some point in the past from bigtime bass tournaments. So it shares the same fate as Alabama rigs.)
For all the history buffs out there, the story of cane-pole fishing rods can be traced back more than 4,000 years ago. The first rods were made from six-foot-long bamboo, hazel shoots, or sections of a thin tapered flexible wood, with a horsehair line attached. A simple hook was attached to the end of the line.
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