FOR MOST home rod builders, putting a rod or two together gives great pleasure. It may be just an old one that you are doing up for yourself or a mate, or it could be a gift for someone.
As strange as it may seem, building a fishing rod for someone can be a very personal thing. It is something that you have crafted with your own hands and there is a fair chance that the person it is intended for will have the rod for a lifetime. That is a big part of what makes rod builders proud of what they build.
Immediate family are usually the first to receive a rod (and why not make one for that little lady in your life? At least you can use it as well!). With a lot of families owning a four-wheel-drive, a beach holiday is pretty popular, so a nice light surf rod is just the thing. And this one is a beauty.
THE FAMILY SURF ROD
When you mention surf rods, most picture a 15 foot pole that weighs a ton which you cast to the outer banks. Surf fishing, heavy rods, and distance casting aren’t always the case. Modern materials and blends of fibreglass and graphite offer builders quite a diversity of sticks to chose from.
When it comes to distance casting, if you’ve learnt how to read the beach for gutters you will know that a lot of the more common species along the beach such as dart, bream, and whiting, are found in quite close. There is no need to cast long distances to get to the fish, so a 12 foot rod that can handle lines of 3-6kg is all you need.
Brisbane-based blank manufacturer Pacific Composites build a blank that fits the bill superbly – the 3145G. The number ‘3’ indicates the number of wraps to the blanks, the ‘145’ tells us the length in inches which works out to be 12’1", and the ‘G’ informs us that the blank has a graphite component in it.
Usually the graphite runs from the butt of the blank for about three quarters of the blank’s length, leaving a few feet of fibreglass at the tip. Graphite is lighter, stiffer and stronger than glass, so its use on the blank gives us a bit more power in the butt without adding a lot of weight. Outside of the weight factor, the stiffer graphite still leaves us with a rod that has enough power to cast out or pull in a fish.
At the end of the blank that nice, soft fibreglass tip is deadly on those bream, loading up nicely under the weight of the fish. For a surf rod, the blank itself does not have a big diameter so the grips don’t need to be huge, making them ideal for the smaller hands of ladies and kids.
Because it isn’t a big surf rod, we don’t need big components, and this saves us a few dollars on parts. The reel seat, for example, is an item for which we can use FUJI’s DPSM 26 seat. This is an economy model, but still has a cushion under the hood and costs about half of the big cushioned 30 and 32 size reel seats that you would normally need to use on a surf rod.
As a stripper guide we have used the 40mm FUJI BSVLG, which is quite sufficient for this job. Its one piece frame is more durable than the larger wire strippers that have several welds to them, and which are usually the first thing to break on a surf rod.
The blank comes in both one and two piece, and our rod recipe has been built on the one piece blank for an Alvey setup. The beauty of building your own rod is that you can make the grips whatever length you like. Likewise, the binding colours are up to you.
I dare say once you have built the rod up you’ll probably want to keep it for yourself!
SPECIFICATIONS:
Blank - Pacific Composites - 3145G
Butt - 7" x 37/8" eva
Winch - FUJI DPSM -26 (fixed hood down)
Foregrip - 10" x 3/4" eva
Cap - FUJI BRC 25mm
Tip - FUJI BPLT 8/ 2.4
Guides - FUJI BSVLG; 8-140mm, 10-215mm, 12-280mm, 16-350mm, 25-430mm, 40-600mm
Alvey open runner above foregrip
