I know numerous Tournament Anglers and none try to hide the fact that they are brutal on their gear. It is what it is. As Tom mentioned, it is about getting that fish in the boat no matter how it is done. Make it clear with your customers when they buy a rod that it is only covered for xyz and that YOU get to make the call on whether it is a warrany or not. Spend a few minutes telling them how to effectively get the most power out of the rod 'even though they will walk away and forget what you said' and you've done all you can. From there, don't feel bad or hesitate to charge them to repair or replace.

Tight Lines and Bull's-eyes,

Get Bit Outdoors
407-542-7840
www.GetBitOutdoors.com
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I think this is one of the best post/response strings I have ever read. Multiple points of view and strong cases made by all. Its nice to see the forum used this way. This type of dialogue advances the craft and improves the products produced in the industry.

-The Batson TEAM
BatsonEnterprises.com

Here's a good way to sum up a typical bass fisherman and a typical tournament day:

Think of it like racing and like a race car. If you're out on the track to win are you worried about a few scratches? Are you worried about about running the engine to hard? Probably not if you want to win! Do racers purposely beat their cars on the wall and over rev the engine? 99% of the time no.

There are people with no remorse for taking advantage of a warranty or a good guy helping him out by getting his rods back up and going. Do not pin that on a bass fisherman though. It's an individual that does the damage not the sport of tournament fishing. The irony of this topic is just a few weeks ago I told my wife about how people jump on this board and talk about bass fisherman then viola!

Tom,
When I used to race airplanes, it was exactly that way. Winning was of the number one concern.
Backup for everything. If you lost and engine, a prop, a wheel, an entire plane, you went to the back up and kept on competing.

Bottom line, equipment is a tool that is used to win a competition. Everything is replacable. Some easy, and some difficult.

Be safe and go for the gold.

Roger

Roger that might be an option! :-)

It's exactly like Alex described imo.

The last tourney I co-angler-ed in the fellow had 10 rods strapped on deck at ALL times, 10-15 more in lockers under the deck, and he never touched a rod with his foot ever (that I saw). Not even a bump from a shoe. He knew his boat WELL. I dont believe too many serious tourney fishermen walk on their rods very often. I'm sure it happens, it would and does to me, especially at night. These guys that are "serious" spend enough time on their decks to know every inch extremely well. From what I see, the majority of damage comes while in hand/use or in and out of lockers.

DR

I actually fished in a 21 foot bass boat this weekend with 2 tournament bass fisherman. The front deck had no less than 16 rods sitting on it. The co-angler had 7 rods in the passenger seat, side rod holders . I took 3 of my own and 6 more for them to use thru out the day. Never once did I see the guy in the front of the boat come close to stepping on the rods. I did see 1 eye busted off while landing a fish. That rod and 3 others that were in the garage left in the back of my truck for repair. The mag-bass rods and the swim bait rods are used to horse the fish in from the deep cover and then used to swing the fish up. I never witnessed any high sticking. And when using lighter spinning tackle the fish were handled with higher levels of care. Talk about intensity in these guys.

They were fair in their apprasal of my rods that they used. They pointed out the faults and the positives. They liked the fact that all the rods I brought had a dense EVA, even though most of thiers had cork. They were suprised at the different guide layouts that my builds had compaired to the off the shelf rods. My rods all had 2-3 guides more than the standard off the shelf rod of the same length, power and raiting. There were several other aspects that they liked and a few others that they did not. Most of their dislike came from the different reel seats I used in the builds, some they were fond of, some they hated.

In the end I got to see the organized chaos that they call fishing. That no nonsense, fishing. To them it is a job, not just a hobby. They use the rods as a tool. They used them hard thru out the day, but I also saw the other side where they did the maintainence that most of us hobby fisherman fail to do. I also watched at the end of the day as they tore all thier reels down and cleaned and lubed them. Conditioned the braided line, and cleaned the grips and rods on all, prior to putting them all in protective socks prior to placing them in the rod lockers.

But, I did cringe on each fish they flipped into the boat.

Roger - to your point.... saying it is a tool is 100% on track. At the elite level you have guys carrying spare trolling motors and generators on board.

I love this story:
The Elites were fishing my home lake and a very good friend of mine was a marshall - basically he rode along with a pro as an observer for the day. They went to the north end of the lake and proceeded to cut right across the middle. My friend white knuckled and closed his eyes. The pro looked over and said "You ok?". Keep in mind they are rolling about 65 - 70 mph. Underneath is a fully flooded forest and an inch either way could mean missing or hitting a tree underwater.

The pro says "Don't worry man... I got a spare motor foot back in the truck".

How do you think he feels about rods if he's not too worried about knocking off the foot of a 250HP motor?

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AD

A lot of guys may be hard on their stuff but this is not a given at all. I have fished tournaments at a local level and for those of us that have to pay for everything breaking a rod is no fun! I build all of ours (wife and I fish team tourneys) and while I may have as many as 10 on deck we have had few problems. I have "blown" a lower unit but it was not from hitting anything! We use a lot of spinning gear here in middle TN and you will not see us swing any fish aboard other maybe the occasional small fry. So I suggest you should spend a little time with any "pros" that would like to purchase one of your rods and find out how they fish them. You can then adjust accordingly and maybe even "suggest" ways they can take better care of your babies!

None of you mentioned guys that need some anger management. I've a couple of those in my list of clients. Bass fishing is terribly hard on rods. I don't know if any of you saw an article on a BASS or FLW winner on Lake Champlane (sic) who made a 60 mile round trip run through what must have been some pretty rough water. Got his rods out of the rod locker and 4 were broken. Had to mix and match what was left so he could start fishing. He was the winner.

One of my anger management guys I only build on the RX6 for him just to take his abuse. Go figure.

Wow ! After reading all the post on bass rod abuse, I think that I might put rod building on the shelf and start up a new type business. I'm only a hobby rod builder and don't build that many rods per year..Reading all of the damage that seem to get done to bass rod while fishing for bass, and the so called abuse they get during tournaments I just thought of something.
I think that I might try to hire myself out to bass fishermen/ women to be a rod caddie on their boat for bass tournaments... I would be there to do the rigging,hand them rods when need be, keep rods out of their way so they don't get stepped on, keep their rods and reels clean and sprayed down with real magic...Then if by chance they should do any breakage, I could get their business first hand..Or maybe give them some pointers on how to handle the hand that feeds them. Humm!!! Going to have to give this some more thought...<<<< Rod Caddie For Hire>>>> What tax law would this come under??? Any takers ??? <<<< DON >>>>

One of the things I've seriously thought about is mobile rod repair. Smallish tag-along trailer, power inverter, rod wrapper & assortment of replacement guides/bits and pieces. The "big guys" who are sponsored by/promoted by rod companies probably won't use the service but there are lots of "back seaters". The single biggest problem is drying time (and my motivation level).

Most of the damage I've seen lately has been caused by rod lockers / storage rather than by someone stepping on rods. Bass Cat boats seem to be notorious for this.

Ken Preston Wrote:
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> The single biggest problem is drying time (and my motivation level).


I can't help on the motivation, but the drying time is easy ... UV activated finish. Mar Ktruz has the rod builder's version of the "Easy Bake Oven" and it only takes seconds.

Jim,
Right on. I saw the Mar Ktruz finish and oven yesterday and it is the perfect solution. Generally 30 seconds to bake a wrap.
Basically, this is the same technology that your dentist uses when he puts in fillings today.

Roger

The oven is good. The fellows at the ICRBE last year did a portion of one of Lana's wraps & it turned out really nice. A bit "pricey" though and (I think) built to European current with a transformer to bring it down to 120v. Some of the folks that tie flies use UV cure finishes also - One was developed by two dentists. Those finishes cure with very low intensity UV (hand held units) - downside is those are awfully expensive if you're doing more than dabbing a drop on the head of a fly

Talking about having 20 rods on deck, which does happen especially in pre fishing, the guy you really have to fear is the one with 2 rods on deck, that means he is totally dialed in on his pattern.