Split Cane Fishing Rods

I haven’t always fished with cane rods, in fact for many years I wasn’t happy unless I was fishing with the latest and lightest carbon creation. I was a match angler (of sorts) in those days, and somewhere along the way, although I was enjoying my fishing, it gradually became more competitive and less relaxing. I even started calling non-match fishing trips ‘practice’ – I didn’t seem to be fishing for fun or pleasure any more.

I still enjoy all kinds of fishing, and my 12.5 metre carbon pole gets an outing on the canal from time to time, but I’ve returned to my roots, and much prefer travelling light, walking the banks of a small river in search of chub, perch and when I’m lucky, plump roach.

I’ve also gone back to reading the angling authors of my youth; Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing by Bernard Venables, others by Richard Walker and Fred J Taylor to name a few, plus many other less well known names. I’m almost as passionate about old fishing books as I am about old fishing rods – the two go hand-in hand really.

Anyway, that tells you a little about me, now I should talk a little about what this blog is going to be about.

Since renewing my passion for small river fishing and the simpler way the sport of angling was practiced in the past, I’ve become interested in old fishing tackle. I’ve amassed quite a collection of old gear from rods and reels to quill and cork floats and somehow it seems more appropriate to use these on my river trips. I’ll probably talk about reels and other tackle from time to time, but the main purpose of this blog is to talk about how you can buy and restore old split cane fishing rods.

I’ve restored a lot of rods from the famous manufacturers of the past, in particular I own a couple of Richard Walker Mk IVs, and some very nice split cane fly rods, but my favourites and the pride of my collection are rods made by Allcocks of Redditch. I own some Wizards including a Super Wizard, some Lucky Strikes and some other Allcocks rods that I’ll talk about in later posts.

At the moment I have several rods waiting for attention, but the next in line is the bottom two sections of a Wizard. Actually I do have part of the top section too – all of three inches of it, but at least that means I have the original ferrule. I know it wont quite be an original Wizard when its restored as the top joint will be an orphaned top joint from some other rod (I have collected quite a lot of these ‘spares’ over the years) but I’m not such a purist that ‘only the original will do’ and it will be just as nice to fish with.

So, in the next post we’ll start the restoration, but if you’re interested in finding a split cane rod to restore yourself, there are some ebay links below that you can click to see what’s on offer at the moment. A word of caution, there are loads of old split cane rods about – the Japanese mass-produced them after the war, but most were never very good to start with and they’re best avoided unless you want something cheap to practice on first.

If you want a rod that will be a pleasure to use, go for the well known classic makers. You wont go far wrong with a rod made by B James of London who made the Richard Walker rods, Allcocks of Redditch, possibly the most prolific and famous manufacturer of the ‘golden age’ or, of course, Hardy, but I’ve always found Hardy rods to be a little out of my reach financially.

Anyway, the links:

Rods by Allcocks of Redditch
Rods by B James of London (MK IV Avon)
Rods by Hardy
Allcocks Lucky Strike
Allcocks Wizard
All split cane rods