When did fishing poles start to be used regularly and what did they look like? How did they advance, and what did the significant advances look like?
At last, a really important question.
The first good source on early fishing poles is a work supposedly by a nun of the later 15th c., Lady Juliana Berners ( I am not a medievalist, and I won't get into textual criticism- but there are doubts she wrote it). Her fishing pole was , well, very pole-like. There was a butt section of about three meters, about as thick as your arm. That was bored out at the end with a socket to take a lighter "croppe" or top, which started with about a meter of hazel, and had some lengths of blackthorne or other tough wood tapered and lashed on to that. The socket of the butt was ringed with iron, so as not to split. The butt also had an iron spike in the base. The whole assembly would be more than 6 meters, so the spike would be driven into the bank, and then instead of having to hold up the whole rod the angler could act as a prop- or could use a wooden prop. There was no reel: a line of knotted horsehair was tied to the end, and an iron hook on that. Floats were apparently used, and various kinds of baits, including artificial flies. When a fish was hooked, the butt was pulled out of the dirt, and the angler would bring it in, hand over hand, until the top could be pulled from the socket and the fish swung into her hand or onto the bank.
The next two good sources are 17th c., Charles Cotton and the famous Isaac Walton. For them, a fishing pole was of a light, straight strong wood like hazel, about three meters long or a bit longer. It would be in two sections, usually, each with a taper to make a lap joint: the angler would lash them together to make a complete rod. It's this time that there's mention of a "wind", or reel, to handle the line. But it also seems to be considered unsporting to use it- something used by a poacher. Through the 18th c., proper anglers would continue to use a pole with a line tied to the tip....of course, a proper angler would also have a gillie- a servant who would would carry his gear and tackle and wade in to get the fish if it was needed.
The rod would often be painted- Cotton thought green was the best color to use for not disturbing the fish. And after every use the rod was wiped down, taken apart, and the lengths tied in a bundle to keep them straight. But there also is mention of boxes kept by the stream to hold an assembled rod. If you were fishing legally, you owned the land or knew the owner, and if you owned the land you could keep a box by your stream for your rods, and possibly could afford a hut as well, so you could keep fishing when it rained.
I am not sure when bamboo or cane poles became common in the 18th c.. But the origin of the split-bamboo fly rod, beloved of the well-heeled fly-fishing community today, is pretty certain. A gunsmith named Samuel Phillipe, in Easton PA, began making them in 1845. The butt section was ash, the two top joints were four-strip cane, and they had silver ferrules. By this time it seems that anglers had decided that reels were OK: perhaps gillies had become too expensive.
EDIT in case this seems rather trivial, the great maker of violin bows, François Tourte, was able to base a lot of his advances from his long experience with a fishing rod. In other words, that lone angler by the lake may be doing far more than meets the eye......