Any one else notice in the Busch shootout that Ben Matsubu was using a spiral wrap for his flippin' stick. Me as a tourney fisherman and selling my rods to tourney fisherman, the more pros you know that use spiral wraps are a somewhat useful marketing tool in selling the idea. I just thought it was cool that a spiral wrap made it on ESPN. Later Bryan.

Bryan,
I work for the Union Pacific Rairoad and yesterday I was showing my Conductor some pics of rods I had built.
{He lives just off of Lake Fork}
He now would like for me to build him a 7ft jiggin' rod.He wants one with 1/2- 1oz lure wt 20lb line and of course spiral wrap. Could you or any one else give me some idea on a nice blank for this aplication?
Thanks,Mike

I like the rainshadow excel, and St. Croix SCIII and SCV. Remember that when you build these rods thay tend to be the heaviest rods in the locker. So a split grip is almost a must, depending on your customer with a flippin stick I use an abreviated thinner fore grip (or no fore grip). And with the spiral wrap you can do equal length guide spacing and doestn't stress the blank too much and allows weght loss through less guides being used(I've found the fuji steel framed guides both SiC and alconite to be the lightest and smallest frame with comparable rings to amtak and pacbay). I wish I had pics of the two sticks I built this past few months. They are strange looking if your only idea of a rod is what you see is in Bass Pro, but functionality comes before aesthetics any day of the week for me. I'm pretty sure you can buy a Rainshadow or St.Croix and pretty happy with that purchase. I'm sure alot of others will chime in and give a little more advice. I know mudhole may have the rod your looking on clearance. Goold luck. Bryan

i have a good friend that lives close to the area and all star roads are what most want and use. i know they are not the only good blanks out there, but it may be an additional bonus to use an all star in their backyard.

Thanks for the info. Bryan and John,
Yes we got a locker full of the Castaway and All Star. Sharon Johnson has been wonderful with giving advice on what is avalable.
I just wish that I didn't have to retie each one into a spiral.

Yeah, Bryan.. That caught my eye too. I got to wondering why that was so uncommon with the T.V. pros. The advantages of the spiral wrapped, bass-customed rods have been reasonably common knowledge for a while now. I'm wondering if the pros are a little handicapped by obligations to sponsors who don't produce 'em. Barry

Sponsorship is probably the reason as you state.