What do you folks do with the…..

[Don Andersen]

Folks,

Been pondering what to do with the experiments, the slightly blemished, the awful casters ( at least in my mind) and the collection of rods that just plain don’t make your personal grade.
All of them are finished, all of them will fish.
So what do you do with them?

Don

[Canewrap]

Don, I don’t typically sell rods so I work trades, donate to charitable organizations or give them away to friends and fly fishing club members. Trades for a really nice reel let’s me sell the reel later if I need to recoup some of my cost.

[henkverhaar]

My true experiments - i.e. the rods that accompany my learning curve - are stashed somewhere deep and dark. The taper prototypes that do not fit my personal preferences get given away. Everything else is in racks, ready to grab when I go fishing...

[Seabowisha Salmo T]

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Folks,

Been pondering what to do with the experiments, the slightly blemished, the awful casters ( at least in my mind) and the collection of rods that just plain don’t make your personal grade.
All of them are finished, all of them will fish.
So what do you do with them?

Don

hello, don; hang em on the wall, they are prettier than picassos or bruegels.

regards, jim w

[LeeO]

I have a hollow built 8’ 6 weight with bamboo ferrules that I made years ago but wasn’t a fan of. I started fishing it this year for bass and also took it out West. Turned out to be a decent rod after all

[flyman219]

I would put them aside and next year take them out again. Forget what your were trying to accomplish with the taper and just cast them with different reel weights and lines. Let the rod decide "what it is". You might find that the rod is not that bad of a taper, it's just not what you had originally planned when you designed it.

Mike Monsos

[Gunpowder Angler]

I am just a hobbyist so all of my rods may fit into those categories, so I fish them. They are all, except for one, refinished rods. I plan on doing some more rods and donating to my local fly fishing club for their raffles.

[Tom Bowden]

If the rod is in good shape, I'll either give it away, or keep it for sentimental reasons or future use. Sometimes it's fun to take an old rod out fishing. Another example is rods I used to use for steelhead fishing, which I keep in hopes that the runs will someday return to my local rivers.

If the rod is in poor shape - i.e. not up to my current standards, I'll salvage the reel seat, guides, and ferrules. The butt sections usually go into the trash, but I keep the tips for future repairs, e.g. splicing a new section on a broken tip. In my area, there are some guys who use sections of old rods to make "shorties" or "franken-rods" from different makers. This summer, I gave two old tip sections to a guy who showed me how to fish a big lake in the area - well worth the value of these old tip sections!

Tom Bowden
Lacey, WA