Casting Rod Observations

[Jerry Rapp]

I have several Berkely Lightning rods that are 6ft and under that I use on a small lake with a lot of overhanging trees. We fish it out of a john boat with no pedestal seats. The shorter rods allow you to get an unweighted fluke or floating worm up under the bushes with no problem. I use either a citica or older 5500C with 10 or 12lb mono. A couple of years ago I got 3 of these rods off ebal for less than $50 total. And that is just my 2 cents worth.

[Mitch f]

Just a dumb question to throw out there because I've never attempted to build a rod before....why can't you use a spinning rod blank and attach a baitcaster handle?

BTW, good call Wayne on the Falcon

[Gavin]

Yep...one of those was built on a cut down 6' spinning blank...The amount you can cut varies depending on the taper of the blank...Most have a straight untapered section under the grip...put the top of the grip were the taper starts, and cut off the back..You wont know how much you can take off until you get the blank in hand.

[moguy1973]

BPS has a 5'6" ML/F Tourney Special casting rod that casts 1/16-1/2oz lures.

http://www.basspro.com/Bass-Pro-Shops-Tourney-Special-Trigger-Rods/product/12041105005514/

[Mitch f]

Yep...one of those was built on a cut down 6' spinning blank...The amount you can cut varies depending on the taper of the blank...Most have a straight untapered section under the grip...put the top of the grip were the taper starts, and cut off the back..You wont know how much you can take off until you get the blank in hand.

Let's say you wanted to place the reel seat a little farther toward the tip and onto the tapered section...do you think an epoxy resin filler would work to fill the void created?

[Mitch f]

BPS has a 5'6" ML/F Tourney Special casting rod that casts 1/16-1/2oz lures.

http://www.basspro.com/Bass-Pro-Shops-Tourney-Special-Trigger-Rods/product/12041105005514/

Do they carry a 6 footer?

[hoglaw]

Just a dumb question to throw out there because I've never attempted to build a rod before....why can't you use a spinning rod blank and attach a baitcaster handle?

BTW, good call Wayne on the Falcon

Bingo. That's exactly what you need to do. I refurbished a rod that one of my friend's grandfathers made a while back. I'll have to look at the blank to figure out what it is exactly, but it's a 6' GL3. Just don't know the model number. He had it set up as a spinning rod with the most god awful big guides you can imagine. I took it out once and hated it. It had no sensitivity at all and it did not cast well. So I took it home and I stripped off all the guides. With those guides and thread (he did underwraps on ALL of them) gone, the rod had a fantastic action. Aslo, the handle he had installed would accept a baitcast reel. So I put one on and taped on some guides to play around with in the yard. It performed pretty well as a very light baitcast rod, but I didn't like the handle for baitcasting. I could have stripped the handle, but this guy had done a really nice wrap just above the handle that was his signature on custom rods, and I wanted to preserve that. I didn't feel comfortable removing the grip and getting a new one exaclty the way I wanted while preserving that wrap, so I just kept the grip and reel seat as-is and replaced the guides. For the stripping guide and one running guide, I managed to reduce the size of each by half, then I used a 4mm micro guide as the choke with 4's all the way to the tip. That rod is the bomb crappie rod now.

But the moral of the story is I could have made a light weight bait cast rod out of it, and I'm confident it would have handled 1/8oz with no problem as long as I spiral wrapped micro guides. I don't think you need to go to the end of the earth to find a suitable blank either. The stiffer the rod is, the more difficulty you're going to have with 1/8oz jigs. So if you take a high modulous high dollar blank that's stiff as a board and sensitive as can be, and you don't dampen it with guide weight (using micros), then it's going to struggle with such light jigs. I think you need something in the extra fast department (the rod takes the most bend near the tip) that has a little bit of play to it. You won't add much by using a micro tip and micro guides. You can get away with only six or seven guides on the rod if you spiral wrap it (as opposed to those gawd awful "Duckett" rods that have like 22 micro guides on a 7' rod), and I think it will handle what you want. If you try to stay super stiff, then you're going to have a hell of a time throwing such a light jig....but this can be done.

[tjulianc]

It's a tall order to find a rod that can both handle the 1/8th ounce jigs AND have enough backbone to set the hook when using the jigs. It's almost a mutually exclusive thing.

I think you can, but it has to be on a longer rod than 6'. Loomis makes a couple of 802C's -on a NRX and GLX blank- and they are 6'8", medium power, extra fast action, and rated for 1/8 -3/8 oz lures. That extra fast tip should help in accuracy, maybe make up for the longer length? I've seen one in action, and it will cast a 1/8 oz jig + trailer as well as any baitcasting rod I've seen.

The down side is obviously the price tag. If you look around you might find some rep samples, holiday sales, etc.

[hoglaw]

Let's say you wanted to place the reel seat a little farther toward the tip and onto the tapered section...do you think an epoxy resin filler would work to fill the void created?

What void? Are you talking about cutting off the butt end of a blank and moving the whole set-up to the tip and the resulting gap between the blank and reel seat? There's no reason to approach it this way and cut a blank down, but if you really want to then you just use masking tape to build up arbors to the inside diameter of the reel seat and epoxy the heck out of the tape.

When you're done taping, it looks like this: tip -----------------------------------------||-||-||-||----butt

with the vertical marks representing bands of tape that are built up to match the inside diameter of the reel seat. Then you epoxy on, around, and between the tape arbors. They also make graphite arbors that you can ream out to the proper size and they fit snugly in a reel seat, but tape works great.

[moguy1973]

Do they carry a 6 footer?

Unfortunately no...They have a Carbonlite that's 6'6" that casts light stuff but no 6' ones...

St. Croix has a Panfish series casting rod that is 6' ML/F rod that is good for 1/8-1/2oz...PC50MLF2

http://www.stcroixrods.com/product/premier-casting