Forum | Holy grail of light rods

OutdoorFrontiers said:I can understand wanting a light rod and reel, but don't you think that this is going to a bit of an extreme?

Probably but it cost me nothing extra to make it light and really cost less.

Reality is lighter is better for several reasons - all things being equal. If I were an elite pro fishing for 100's of thousands of dollars I would want any and every real or conceived advatage I could get. Confidence is a wonderful thing and if you have it in your equipment as well as your baits – all the better.

All these rods are current day IM7 – I think. Mine is a blend of graphite to give it some of the flex of 'glass with all of the backbone of graphite.

Currently there is a guy in NC builiding 8' 'trap rods from CastAway XP3 964 blanks. The blank starts life at 2.2oz. The rod, when he finishes is reel ready at 3.1oz. My 4.2 was miles from what he accomplishes. You should know… Mine has no decorative wraps – stealth rod. You saw the micro guides that it as. There's only 3 thread wraps before I start up the foot. I put two Aluminum winding checks on it that serve absolutely no purpose. Was going to do fancy stuff then went with pure functional. The rear grip on the split grip at 3 1/2″ is about twice what I really need. The guy in NC starts with a double exposed Castaway reel seat then splits that and chunks the middle parts and installs it as a split seat. I used a fuji exposed seat only. My blank started life at 2.6 so I added 1.6oz to it during the build. The guy in NC adds .9oz – to complete the build – nearly unbelievable – but true. That's guides, seat and grips – .9oz. As you might expect he caters to and builds for some of the guys fishing the Elite series.