New Hampshire Largemouth Bass Fishing: Squam Lake

Use a Telescoping Rod to Simplify Your Trip and Travels

We'd been fishing for about half an hour for largemouth bass and whatever else our grubs and grubtails might scare up when a two-pound bass hit my walk-the-dog retrieve and broke my rod. It's unusual for a fish this small to snap a rod tip, but this was no ordinary rod. Today I was using specialized gear brought along by Mike, a commercial pilot for Northwest Airlines.

Although Mike lives in Massachusetts, he's based in Detroit, which makes for a complex commute to work. Any fisherman who's a commercial pilot is by trade is also by necessity a briefcase angler attracted to the portable and the compact, so Mike is owner of a tidilly potent arsenal of telescoping rods he keep in this briefcase.

Each time he leaves Massachusetts to go to work, he cushions the compressed rods spare uniform, hops onto a jet to ride dead head, then, touching down in new freshwater fishing territory roughly nearly every twenty-four hours, he hails a cab for some local lake in, say Shanghai or Singapore. A guy like this needs three or four fishing rods, one for each fellow pilot he fishes with. He was down one less rod now.

Telescoping fishing rods are a good alternative for the devoted freshwater fisherman, from the most devout largemouth bass enthusiast to the most humble crappie and bluegill angler. If you travel a lot for your work, they're small, handy, don't require special rod cases, and are compact enough to fit into the breast pocket of a light jacket or an overcoat. They can be spooled with any variety of saltwater and freshwater fishing lines, from Spider Wire to dacron line to monofilament, and are sold, typically, complete with equally miniature reels. Cost is usually under $100.

Mike and I were at Squam Lake, New Hamphire with access to a small fleet of boats at our disposal: an aliminum canoe, three plastic sea kayaks, and finally his inflatable zodiac powered with a 25-horsepower motor. Mike had flown up to the lake in his four-seater Pacer airplane, a prop plane he tools around in when he's not making a living flying for Northwest in some very, very large jets.