Hi, welcome to our group,
Abu like Mitchell, Conolon, and quite a few other companies made up the Garcia family of International sporting goods manufactures and destributors during the 60's, 70's and early 80's. The Abu line still remains as part of the Garcia Group, the Conolon and Mitchell products are simply trade mark names today, neither being made by the original manufactures.
That your rod is stamped Abu and made in America, pretty well places it as a Conolon product produced for Abu and then shipped to them for further handling and marketing. The Abu rods included others of the Conolon lineup including the Charles Ritz series as marketed by Abu.
That your rod caries the name Citation leads me to think its an early rod, the Citation series goes back to the earliest days of Narmco, San Diego, when Conolon was the process used to produce the rod blanks. The name/model Citation was the highest grade of the early rods. If you can post a picture of your rod I can most likely give you alot more detail. As best its just a guess now, that it was produced between 1962 and 1971 at the Conolon plant in Santa Anna, California. Based on your description and without pictures I would have to say it was a Tournament rod, weighed 8 ounces, and was rated for an 8wt line. Does yours look like it has or had a butt extension now or at one time? Before 1972 it was the second highest priced rod of the Conolon/Abu lineup, and was dropped when the Charles Ritz line of rods started being marketed by Abu. Post a picture if you can I would really like to see that rod.
Richard

Thank you, Richard for your quick response, some pictures are on the way to your private email-adress!
Regards, Klaus-Dirk

Klaus-Dirk,

I it is acceptable to you, I will post the photos here.

Tom

enuf with the tantalizing. Pictures, pictures!

drive safely! no speeding. We need you to be well.

Hi Richard,
thank you for all your help and the information. Looking forward for seeing the ABU Citation on "Fiberglassflyrodders"; and who knows, maybe one day an enthusiastic angler from the USA visits me in Hamburg and takes the rod back to the US?.

Man, what a beautiful rod! Boy, it would be a great redfish rod. Also would be a nice surf-fishing rod, with that length.

Tom L.

Hi everyone. Im from sweden and are new to this forum.
I found this forum when googling info on an old Abu garcia Rod similar to that mentioned above.

I have two questions for you guys.

1. This year has been kind of a starter for me when it comes to fiberglass rods, because i bought my first one early this summer. It’s a orvis superfine 7,6 #4 glassrod. Do you have any experiences with this rod? I love it so far. Takes my fly fishing to another level.

2. This is my main question. I helped a friend move this weekend and among his stuff I spotted an old rod and tried to get more information about it but couldn’t find any. Can someone tell me a little about this rod and it’s history etc. I will attach a picture of this rod in this post.

Thanks in forehand. / Josef

that's an exceptionally nice rod, both color and ferrule (Tom's post) reminds me of mid-70s Berkley para/metric.
I'm wondering since it doesn't say Conolon, whether they didn't source the rod from Berkley.

Thank you so much. As i fished the Orvis Rod this summer i liked it more and more by the time.

Abu bought Garcia in 1984 so it must have been produced after that...

I see. Is Richard still active on this forum?