Broken Rod
by Steve Scott

I was fishing the Toccoa River that runs beside Highway 60 in North Georgia and the fishing was really awesome that day as I caught over 100 trout in about 2 ½ hours catching and releasing. I was standing on the bank about ten feet below the road when I heard a car pull up. I turned to see that it was some local mountain folk checking me out to see if the fish were biting. There were two men and one woman in the car and I heard the woman tell to two guys to go stand beside me to see how I was catching fish after fish, literally ever cast brought in a trout of some size or another. After just a few minutes one of the men said that he knew why I was catching so many fish. He and the other man ran back to the car and told the woman that I was using a “broken rod”.
Years before I had a custom designed ultra light fishing rod built by my good friend Cal Parker, Jr. of Roswell Georgia. The design was that of a bait casting rod with the action of a spinning rod tip. The eyes start out at the handle normally for about 3 eyes then start to twist around the rod towards the tip until all of the eyes are on the bottom side of the rod just like a spinning rod. This allowed me to use a Zebco 33 reel with the sensitivity of a spinning rod. Hence the “broken rod”.
The reason why I was catching so many fish was because I think the day before, the DNR truck stocked this location and I was using my favorite bait, the cricket, seldom used by the locals who insist that corn is the bait for trout.