Cane Pole Fishing
Just about everybody remembers cane pole fishing when they were young. With today’s high-tech carbon fiber world of expensive fishing gear, it’s a good thing to step back and re-examine the benefits of using a simple cane pole to polish up your stalking techniques. Let’s take a look…..
Cane pole fishing can be either very basic and simple or if you prefer it can be a little more modern.
We’ve all seen those cars going down the road with a bunch of 14 ft. cane poles sticking out the window with the corks flapping in the wind. If you hesitate to do that yourself, you can now get “cane poles” that are telescoping fiberglass and are made to transport in a much smaller space. No more open car windows are needed as these collapsible rigs can easily be tucked under your seat.
Cane Pole Advantages:
Cane poles are very lightweight and you can handle one all day without aching arm muscles. Cane poles have no reel attached and no moving parts to break and ruin your fishing day. One big advantage is that they are dirt cheap! Your “rod” is around 12 to 14 feet long and this accompanied by 20 feet of line tied to it gives you some tremendous reach from the bank. You can really fish sunken treetops and brush with super precision and ease. This can be a huge advantage when fishing for crappie in heavy structure. You can stalk fish from the bank without spooking them as you would in a boat bobbing around. There are many advantages to cane pole fishing that seemed to have been forgotten over the years in the never ending quest to modernize fishing equipment.
The Basic Cane Pole Rig
Whether or not you have chosen the good ole bamboo pole or have opted for a more modern collapsible stow-away version, you still rig it out the basically the same way. I prefer to use around 10lb. test mono-filament line tied directly to the tip. Sometimes I may use a cork or just use a hook and a small sinker weight for tight line structure jigging. One tip if using a natural bamboo pole is to tie the line back about a foot from the end of the tip and then wrap the line all the way to the tip and tie it off again. This may save your catch if you hook a bigger fish and it breaks off the delicate tip. Most fiberglass poles are stronger than bamboo and this is unnecessary. For standard crappie or perch fishing I use a small #10 hook and a pinch type lead sinker.
One thing I would strongly suggest is stopping by our fishing discussion board at TexasRiverData.com and ask any questions you may have and get more cane pole instructions and tips. You can read and discuss the latest information there.
The next time you want to do a little perch fishing don’t forget to rig up a cane pole of your choice and bring back some of those good memories…