Hi all. I've just joined up because I saw this thread elsewhere and might be able to help. I'm a keen angler and certainly looked carefully at the angling scenes in the film.
The Jaws rod is a Fenwick Woodstream 130lb class. It was brown (painted) fibreglass and had a brown foam foregrip with Mildrum roller guides and a Varmac reel seat size RS6H. The rod used in Jaws was one of the earlier models and had a wooden butt. I have, after much searching, just bought an almost identical model; the only difference is that mine has the later stainless steel butt with everything else exactly the same (wooden butts had a habit of snapping on a savage strike when trolling so Fenwick developed a stainless steel butt which was replaced with the aluminium Aftco butt when Fenwick redesigned the rod to use white fibreglass and Aftco roller guides).
I believe the rod used in the film was used in charter fishing for some years after the film was shot and was recently sold after being refurbished. The wooden butt had been sanded and polished to remove the original brown paint job and the guides replaced with a different model, which I have not yet identified. Although it looks quite different now from the way it did in the film, it is not the rod shown in the photo from the Universal studio photo above.
I say this because the rod recently sold as THE rod still had some the brown paint on the blank between the new whippings for the guides whereas the one in the photo from Universal has been stripped to the blank or was not painted in the first place.
Further, though I can't be sure, I am not convinced the Universal rod has the Varmac RS6H reel fitting, though the picture is unclear and there is quite a bit of corrosion present.
Hope this is of help.
Of course, I'm looking to find a 16/0 Senator now. I have the hook!
Hello, Late to the thread, but wanted to chime in. The wood butt on quint's rod is a common misconception. It was actually steel, covered with matching hypalon as the foregrip, which gave it a wood-like appearance. A qucik freeze frame will show it. I will try to get a pic. Fenwick had moved past the wood butts and pioneered the steel. When deeper rod holders became common, they stopped with the foam covering as it would easily tear.
This raises an interesting question. The actual rod was updated after the movie by the fisherman who owned it. Later it sold for 25k, but with a wood butt. I don't understand why, if they are adding new guides, grips etc, why would they go backwards in time with wood-butt technology? OK taking tin hat off now.
The Universal rod is greeted with skepticism by some, myself included. Much the same unanswered question as the backwards-to-wood-butt head-scratcher, the Universal reel also has replaced a Yellow torpedo knob with a black torpedo knob, when newer cranks were barrel-shaped, like the knob shown on your rod.