Diseased Hop Plant

My four cascade plants were all around 18 feet tall and full of cones. One of the four consisted of 2 main bines and around the 7 ft point I noticed both of them had what looked to be a split or crack in the main bine stalks. They were oozing a very sticky liquid that smelled horrible. My best description for the odor is ''monkey ass''. I've never smelled anything like it.

Anyway, one of the 2 bines started getting brown cones so I stripped the plant off the rope completely and a few days later the same thing happened to the other cones. I stripped that plant to the ground too to avoid possible spreading of this to the other healthy plants which are doing fine a week later.

Anybody ever had this problem or can any offer an explanation or advice to avoid this in the future?

never having had a chance to go to the zoo, i don't know what monkey ass smells like but i'm sure it's probably similar to other varieties of asses. honestly, i've had cracked/split bines before but it was usually during periods of intense rainfall and i attributed the problem to too much water. your problem sounds a little different. check out this link and maybe you can see something similar to your ailment: http://www.usahops.org/userfiles/file/Research Reports & Presentations/HopPocketGuideFINAL[1].pdf . hop on!

Thanks for that link. It's a tough call on this one.