I started with a cane pole, and eventually worked my way through every style of fishing equipment available. In essence the difference between fishing equipment types is basically the kind of reel that is used. Poles basically are long thin whippy things with rings tied to them.
Reels are basically spin-cast, spin, bait-cast, or fly reel.
Lines are some sort of translucent monofilament or plastic, braided, or fly line.
Baits are various forms of live bait or lures (flys being a lure).
The method of casting varies mostly between fly casting and everything else. Everything else being relatively similar.
I've gone through them all, pretty much every iteration. And I've gone back and forth through some of them. I've never been stuck on one particular type, although I do a lot better with a spinning rig than I do with a bait casting rig and haven't used a bait casting rig in a long time. Currently I'm fishing with a fly rod about 90% of the time and a spinning rig about 10%.
The only thing I have against cane poles is the limitation of reach, otherwise I'd occasionally be using that too.
Bait casting rigs, I am told, have come a long way since back when I was using an Ambassadeur 5000c. I've not tried one since those days so maybe I need to. I was the backlash king back then. I definitely spent more time untangling bird nests than I did fishing.
I've also been told that spin-casting has come a long way since my Zebco 202 days. Not sure how that could be improved, they were pretty near bullet proof back then. Other than they were kind of clunky feeling to me with all that weight on top of the rod.
If someone invented a spin-casting reel that under hung the way a spinning reel does I'd definitely look into that.
Fly fishing though, it suits this river well in most places. There are a few places where a spinning reel can reach farther than the fly rod can, and that's primarily why and where and when I use one.
