I was reading another thread about tenkara fishing and about how various anglers had tried cheap telescoping poles to see if they’d like tenkara fishing. CM Steward mentioned how he lost the biggest trout of his life because his pole broke. I feel the pain! This got me to thinking; European carping poles are much stronger than these panfish poles and they have an elastic of various strengths depending on how your fishing running through the center. This allows you to handle much larger fish than is possible with a panfish pole.
These poles do carry a rather hefty price tag though. You can easily spend over $500 for a top notch pole. I have a 7.5 meter Fox Sideliner pole with a 1.5 meter extension which means if I have it all put together it’s about 30 feet long. It’s one of the cheaper poles and if I remember right it cost me about $200 several years back. I’m happy with it and used it for panfishing quite a bit. I usually only had about 3 sections put together so I was fishing with a pole about 20 feet long. The only annoyance was that part of the elastic would sometimes pull out when I didn’t want it to.
If you’d like to look at them Wacker Bait & Tackle sells them. Their web site is http://www.wackerbaits.com/sf/index1.html
From what sites I have seen and CM_Stewart, the Tenkara rod is only a little stiffer than a cooked spaghetti noodle. Well, maybe not quite that light, but 0-1w kind of light if not lighter. You need to be able to load it with a furled leader.
However, one of the first things I thought of when it was mentioned a fish could pull the tip section off was a corded tent pole. While I have some corded tent poles that are pretty limp, I am not even suggesting to try one. The ferrules are sloppy and the darn things would be heavy and would flop around like a bull whip.
Besides that, I don’t want to be the one accused of calling Tenkara “Corded Tent Pole Fishing” Nope. Don’t want to go there at ALL! :lol:
Actually, there’s quite a range of actions, ranging from a full flex which is pretty whippy to a tip flex which is surprisingly stiff. What they all have in common is that the top few sections are very light and flexible. In the stiffest rods, it seems like it is just the last few sections that are “loaded.”
I also have an English pole. It’s a 14.5 meter Maver Fightback (approx. 48 feet.) Only the top three or four sections of this would be suitable for Tenkara-style fishing. You can also buy English “whips” anywhere from 2.5 to 10 meters. They’re much cheaper than the take-apart poles, and they’re similar in action to the Tenkara rods. They can also be fitted with elastic.
So what is all the fuss about this Tenkara fishing. It doesn’t seem all that different than what my brother and I did as kids. In the spring my dad would take us to the hardware store and there we would pick through a big bundle of calcuta cane for a fishing pole for the summer. These poles were anywhere from twelve to eighteen feet long. We very carefully picked the longest one in the bunch since at that age we thought if a little bit is good, then a bunch is a whole lot better.
We would bobber ( thats strike indicator for those of you that are too proud to use a bobber) fish worms with them, we bottom fished with them without bobbers, and we would run a long piece of dad’s worn out level fly line with a four to five foot llevel leader and fish poppers to the bluegills and bass. Many two to four pound bass were caught with this popper setup. Never was there any question if the tackel was strong enough. The only thing these rigs did not stand up to was spearing trees while walking through the woods to go fishing or the road when theh fell off the bicycle and got run over by my brother.
After the tips got broken off we used them to doodle-sock bass.
They eventually got too short to fish and ended up as tomato stakes.
fishbum
You just need to tighten it a little.
Ok, it is time to hyjack one of these darn “pole” threads(shaking head, mumbling something about calling them rods).
What the heck is “doodle-sock”?
If you put a reel on one of your calcutta cane poles, would it seem all that different from your lightest weight fly rod?
Actually I when I made this post I wasn’t thinking about tenkara fishing at all; merely attaching a fly to the business end of one of these European style poles and then swinging it into the water and not actually trying to cast at all. I don’t think this would work for dry flies but heavy nymphs, micro jigs, etc. would work. With one of these poles if a larger fish struck you would have a fighting chance to bring it in. This style of fishing definitely wouldn’t be like tenkara fishing.
Incidentally, despite their great length these poles aren’t as heavy as you might suppose. A newer 8.5 meter pole similar to mine has a listed weight of only about 24 ounces, much less if you don’t use the whole thing.
I’ve seen a video of a guy catching either salmon or steelhead (don’t remember which) with a pole and fixed line. He was bait fishing, and definitely was not using a tenkara rod (or pole, if you prefer) but it was one heck of a fight. I’ll find it again a post a link if anyone’s interested.
I have enough trouble with 9’, let alone 30-40. :lol:
Where would you use a rod, pole, whatever, like that? I’m just going by the waters I have known here in the Rockies. There are a few places you could use something like that, but the vast majority of my fishing in recent years has been on streams, lakes, rivers that don’t have enough room to swing one of those around. In most places, the Tenkara rod at 11-14’ is way too long. I would feed ALL of my flies to the trees, not just most of them.
Doodle-socking is fishing with a long cane pole with only five or six feet of heavy line, like 50 pound test braided line, attached to the end of the pole. You whould tie on a 4/0 cincinnati bass hook and on that put on an Uncle Josh pork frog or you would use a nipple lure. The idea is while one person rows the boat slowly along the trash and lilly pads the other reaches out over the pads and dunks and dabbles the lure into the holes and pockets in the pads. When you catch a bass you hand over hand the pole to the boat until you can net the bass. Then you trade places with the person rowing the boat and do it again.
I learned this from my grandfather and my dad in the 50s. I got to row the boat most of the time.
I hope this gives you some kind of picture of what it is.
fishbum
Yeah, it’s known by different names in various parts of the country. In Kentucky where I’m from, it’s called jig or jigger pole fishing. I’ve also heard it called “idiot sticking”.
I learned it from my dad who fished for bass just like you describe above. It’s hand-to-hand combat fishing! 
My 48-footer tips out at two pounds.
Sounds like a load of fun to me.