I found an old Garcia Conolon fast taper fly rod that is 8.5'. I'm thinking that it is too heavy. Would it be a bad idea to cut 1-1.5' off the butt section? That would make the sections different length.

Yeah, I think that would be a bad idea. You will end up with a rod that is short and still heavy. I would treat it like an antique, leave it original, and buy one of the lamiglas s glass blanks in the length I wanted if I wanted to fish a glass rod. Or one of the inexpensive graphite blanks which still make fine rods.

Of course you can just tape a reel on it where the reel would be mounted after you cut it, and try casting it like that. I bet you change your mind after you try it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2007 02:48PM by Bill Moschler.

I did that same thing with an old conolon fiberglass rod. What i did was cut 6" off the end of the butt section(tip end) and 6" off the tip section(butt end) the problem was to find ferrules that would connect the two; but since the old conolon had metal ferrules anyway, that was no problem; just measure the two ends that will need ferrules and then match them as closely as possible. I had to build up a threadbase on one end, but the transition looked fine. What i got was a really nice, fisheable 7.5 foot rod, a mite beefy in the butt but a nice quick tip. It is a much better rod at 7.5 feet than it was at 8.5 feet; both sections are of equal length. I purchased my ferrules from jann's netcraft. Hope this helps. In Dale Clemons old book, Building Fiberglass fly rods, there is a section devoted to making ferrules out of old fiberglass rod pieces.-gb-