I was finally able to figure out what was stopping me from making the pole work (it checked if the item was still the vanilla fishing pole at one point), thanks to looking at this: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1826661-forge15xw-code-new-fishing-rod-without-editing-vanilla-classes/page__hl__+fish#entry22636048
and pouring through the code

Unfortunately, internet is down, so I'm unable to test this.
Internet is back, fishing pole is functional (bobber entity is pretty jumpy/buggy), but no textures