I intend to build a spin rod for a customer. He wants a 2 piece for casting a 1 inch bubble (half filled with water), 3 ft. of leader and a fly. Trout to 6 lbs. are available. He wants max. range and will use rod for no other purpose. I asked him to send the spin reel and will follow the guideline in the 10-4 issue of Rodmaker for guide spacing. Length of rod is not a factor, I'm thinking a fly rod blank, mabe a noodle rod, what say you??? Gary ([email protected])

I'm still not sure just how efficient the slower action fly rod blanks are as spinning rods (a "fast action" fly rod blank falls in at about 65 to 70AA. Most "fast action" spinning blanks fall in around 70+AA.)

There are plenty of spinning blanks around that should fill the bill here. Same with many popping blanks. I don't think you need to look far outside the intended category. But there is nothing wrong if you do.

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The noodle rod blank is not good for this fishing ,but if you build spinning rod on fly blank 9' W7-W8 your customer can be happy.
I fish for speckled trout,red fish ,flounder with one rod build by me on ALL STAR AUSTIN 9'W8 blank catching and 9lb. trout on jig with FIRELINE 4lb. +fluorocarbon leader.I can say is very good rod.

Jean

I was thinking that a popping blank would be good even before I read Tom's reply

Gary, it's not the exact same situation you're in, but I ran across a situation last fall that might help you.

I was fishing my favorite South Jersey estuary, looking for striped bass, and became excited when I realized the bass were on the feed. They were right next to a bridge, and surface feeding very aggressively on spearing. You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on -- it sounded like someone was dropping grapefruit-sized rocks from the bridge.

I threw a variety of plugs at them, but got no takers. Thinking that because they were feeding on spearing, and a slim-profiled fly would be a better imitation, I ran and got my 10-weight fly rod and some surf candies and clousers. But after a few casts I realized with disgust that they were out of my range -- they were about 200 feet from shore, close enough to cast a plug (which they didn't want), but too far for fly tackle (which probably would have cleaned up). I went home fishless and despondent.

The next day I came up wiht the idea of making a spinning rig to throw flies. I bought a few casting eggs, which are used to cast flies with spinning tackle, but didn't like how big they were. I've been experimenting this summer with egg sinkers, and I think I have a rig that will allow me to throw flies about 75 yards with spinning tackle. I'll carry it with me in case I run across a situation like this.

My point (and I'm sorry I've taken too long to get there) is that my "spinning fly" rig is not that different an application than your customer will be using his rod for. And in testing and fishing my egg-sinker rigs, I've used a standard spinning blank, and it's worked great. You can probably come up with something workable with some kind of fly blank, but I don't really see the need to reinvent the wheel here -- there are many, many good spinning and popping blanks out there, and one that fits your customer's purposes should work great.