If you passed the "I have the right boat" test, you could use a pole. Twelve foot poles are hard to come by, but here are the two routes you can take: consulting Garrett Conover's book "Beyond the Paddle" (1991, Tillbury House Publishers, Gardiner, Maine - of course), you will find yourself in pursuit of a piece of clear spruce, 1.5 inches by 1.5. I'll tell you a secret: Don't bother looking in Home Depot. I found the clearest piece of spruce (which is what your basic two by four is made of), and cut it down into squares. Using a hand plane, I knocked off the corners to make it octagonal, then knocked those corners off too. I also tapered it from 1.5 inches at the foot to slightly less than 1 inch at the top. I shoed it with a piece of chrome sink drain pipe and stuck a lag bolt in the end. Finally, I wrapped and sanded fiberglass around the spots with knots. It worked nice for a while, but the swelling of the wet wood finally popped the fiberglass, and I heard a big "crack" the last time I leaned over the gunwale with it, ascending a chute through a beaver dam.

There is a third route, you can liberate one from the forest on an as-needed basis. The Abenaki and early trappers did this, leaving them leaned against a tree when they were done, so some one else might take advantage of it. If you do this, please don't cut live trees.

The other route to take is to find yourself a metal supply shop. Try the yellow pages. Order a twelve foot by one inch OD, 0.058 inch wall thickness, ASTM T6065 aluminum tube. They will probably try to ding you for $50, but they normally go for around half that. If you know some one in the business, you're ahead of the game. When you get it home, wash it, sand the inside of the ends, and pack the ends with epoxy. A one inch plug should be plenty. To keep it from pushing all the way in, you can use a bolt or roofing nail, head-in, and pack around it with the epoxy. A bolt makes a nice tip for catching on rocks, but adds weight too. I have found that the plain aluminum end has a decent bite to it, and by the time I'm dead, the pole will probably be worn down to 11-1/2 feet, but so what.

Which is best? They both have advantages. The Aluminum is lighter, won't have any weakening defects, stows nicely in the canoe (you can tie it off inside the gunwale, out of the way, and it will spring back straight when you untie it). It also chills your hands (nasty in cold weather), transmits ear-splitting clankity-clanks as it smacks the rocks underwater. Birds fly from their perches, animals flee in terror. The wood is quiet, easy on the hands, and plenty strong if it has no knots or defects. It doesn't bend into the gunwale as nicely and tends to take a curved shape after a short time of stowage. This curve doesn't seem to affect performance though. I made mine tapered and shoed only on one end, but I could stick either end in the water, in a pinch. I guess, if I could find a decent chunk of spruce, I'd want a 12 foot woody.