A NUMBER of the rods that we have looked at in this section over the past months have been from the middle to upper price bracket. While these truly are fine sticks to build up they can be out of the price range of many home rod builders.
For this reason I thought we would have a look at making up a good all round beach and rock rod on a good old fashioned fibreglass blank that you shouldn’t have any trouble locating through your local tackle dealer.
The blank is the SU 162 7W, that is a 162” (13’ 6”) blank of seven (7) wraps made on a “SUrf” mandrel. The three main blank manufacturers, Snyder, Pacific Composites and Kilwell all make these blanks, which are popular blanks and you shouldn’t have too much trouble locating one.
The action is not a particularly fast one. When loaded up, the blank does bend someway down its length, so I would class it as a mid action rod.
The blank is well suited to line classes of fifteen to twenty pound, which tends to be fairly popular with your everyday beach fisherman who might chase a few tailor and jew as well as wanting to be able to fish off the rocks and catch your average run of the mill fish. It is a fair ask of the one rod, but this one will cover all of these options.
It is not going to cost you an arm and a leg for the blank either, retailing for around the $55 dollar mark. Perhaps a little more or less depending on where you shop.
One of the advantages of building your own fishing rod, especially in the class that this one falls into is that you can likely save a few dollars by doing it yourself. To buy the same shelf rod built up in Australia with all the good FUJI rod components you would be looking in the ball park of $130.
Surf rods do take quite a bit of punishment; often neglected more that any other rod. They face the sand, sun and surf, the rocks, being strapped to roof racks and bull bars and all of the other rigours of beach fishing.
Because this is the case and it is hard to avoid, you would be foolish to build up the rod with components that will not take this kind of treatment for any length of time. That is why you should use FUJI guides on all of your rods. They have been around for a long time for good reason.
The guide to choose for this purpose is the FUJI BNHG guide. It has a strong one piece stainless steel frame with an aluminium oxide ring and a green luminous shock ring.
These guides are the best for this style of fishing resisting chipping and the guide frame splitting. An added bonus of this particular FUJI Guide style is that they are relatively inexpensive. The little that you would save by alternate brand guides is really not worth bothering about for the long tern durability of the rod.
Down on the butt end of the rod, most of the surf fishing done in South East Queensland is done with an Alvey side cast so we have built this up as a low mount with a seven inch EVA grip and a twelve inch foregrip.
A FUJI FPSM 30 reel seat will sit firmly on the blank, in this case requiring only a little packing on the top end of the winch.
An Alvey open runner has been added just above the foregrip and for the stripping guide (which is about half way up the rod) you can opt for a 70 mm wire stripper or for a size 40 FUJI BNHG.
Even though we build our production model of this rod with a 70 mm wire stripper my personal preference is for the size 40 FUJI Guide. The wire strippers have a number of welds, both in the frame and one on the ring itself. With a bit of use and a few bumps these wire rings are the first thing to break.
Why use a wire ring on the production model you may ask? The answer is very simple in that eight out of ten Queenslanders prefer to buy the rods with these on them, where as for the same rod in Western Australia we sell far more with the FUJI Guide - it is just a case of market demand.
This surf rod is by no means the best rod you can get for surf and rock fishing, it is, however, a good all rounder and one that you will have for a long time.
Use the right components on the rod and you will not be disappointed with the long term durability and performance.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Butt - 7” x 1” EVA
Winch - FUJI FPSM 30
Foregrip - 12” x 1”
Butt Cap - BC 1 1/8”
Tip - FUJI BPHT 12/4.0
Guides FUJI BNHG
12 - 21.5 cm
16 - 27 cm
20 - 33.5 cm
25 - 46 cm
40 - 66.5 cm
