The Poachers Rod
Early in the FISHKAR project we acquired an interesting old item that was labelled as a ‘walking stick/ poachers rod’ !! The item was bought after seeing pretty blurry photos online, but as our aim is to discover and share the most interesting angling items ever designed and fished, we decided to make the winning bid.
It turned out that the ‘walking stick’ was made of natural bamboo cane with a metal screw cap to the thinner end.
Thankfully it had not been used as a walking stick.
I was surprised and absolutely delighted to discover the oriental scene carvings all along and around the shaft that were not apparent on the photos and not in the auctioneer’s description. One of the main identification factors in collecting anything are the maker’s marks. After a thorough check there was no English text or markings anywhere. BUT…… there were some symbols that looked either Chinese or Japanese to my untrained eye.
This is where our family connections really helped as we have a lovely Japanese daughter-in-law and son who are both fluent in the spoken and written language. The consensus was that ‘it is Japanese script’ but in the old style which really helped in trying to date the item. From one of our Victorian books, the firm of Bartlett advertised ‘Novelty’ walking stick rods in 1882 !! Was this one of those???….not sure? surely there would be a ‘made in England’ mark somewhere?? If so, this would be the case with wholesale items that were sold through various retailers of the period where the actual maker remained anonymous. At this point the information that we had was neither here nor there in identifying the item.
Over a few months of inactivity on this ‘information hunt’ we discovered by sheer chance that during the mid to late Victorian times the Japanese anglers practised ‘Tenkara’ fishing. Coincidentally, a telescopic Bamboo pole of about 9’ – 12’ in length was involved …this is exactly what we had in our hands as our rod extended to just over 9’ !!
For Tenkara, a line was attached to the end of the rod with a natural or artificial fly attached to the end. Perfect for the small mountain fish that were highly prized and sought after during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Today we practice a similar type of fishing using modern carbon ‘whips’ for canal float fishing, employing an elastic shock absorber if larger fish take the bait.
The modern ‘Tenkara’ poles are very short and quick action as opposed to the more forgiving, softer action whips commonly used all across Europe. Through the wonders of Instagram we discovered that there is a renaissance in the Tenkara method which is very popular all over the world and not just in Japan.
So the question still remains …. “Do we have an original mid to late Victorian Japanese fishing rod?” In fact a ‘Tenkara rod? Not a ‘poachers’ stick?
Sometimes you can search and search for clues and nothing turns up!!!
It was now about nine months into the ‘Hunt’ and searching through old makers catalogues and publications by Victorian angling writers turned up great identification of floats, hooks, flies and some pretty gruesome bait mounts, but nothing relating to our ‘Rod’. So the Japanese fishing ‘pole’ conundrum dropped out of mind, until………. !!!!
Whilst reading ‘The Scientific Angler’ 5th Edition 1891 by David Foster of the famed Fosters of Ashbourne angling company, Mr Foster discusses fishing for Dace, Gudgeon and other small fish and amazingly he says: “The telescopic ‘Japanese’ rods answer well for these fish”…. You could have knocked me down with a feather after seeing this…
So from this statement it was apparent that some British anglers were obviously well accustomed to the Japanese style of fishing, even in Victorian times, and that a few were imported to Britain, as ours most probably was? ….(this is the reason why we recommend reading old literature) as it often helps to solve the riddles of ‘Fishing the past’ 🙂
Conclusion:
So we do have an original ‘Telescopic Japanese Rod’ in fact an original ‘Tenkara Rod’ to be precise. Result 🙂
