Unlike hunting, I was not raised fishing. My family owned a set of hand-me-down rods from someone who might have fished at one point. The rods themselves are classics, but in hopeless condition. By todays standards, they are antiques. The body of the rod I prefer to use is laminated wood, and the guides are rusted and have a tendency to grab the line. At one point they may have been proud shining brass. The reel was a mess, and for the longest time the whole rig sat inside my parents shed. Fishing was something we did on weekends, in stocked ponds, for fish that never knew better. One day when helping my father clean things up, I stumbled across the old rod which no-one had used in a decade and got a crazy idea: I was going to take up fishing.
A pretty good article about how to start fishing from the geek up.
