I have never fished a center pin, no less built a center pin rod. If anyone has any advice it would be appreciated. I will be floating down the New River from Indepence Va. to NC state line. I will be targeting mostly smallies, however there are reports of a few musky in the area. I plan on using helgramite patterns, woolly buggers, lizard patterns, night crawlers, and crawfish patterns. I was wondering what length blank would be best for floating down a small river? Guide, handle, reel suggestions? Thanks for your help. I will be attending ICRBE this year and would like to pick up enough stuff get started on this and a couple other projects.

I'm sure you'll get some suggestions from centre-pin rod builders, but in the meantime, the newest issue of RodMaker has a complete in-depth article on building centre-pin rods.

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Dean, I am not familiar with that river or the size of it but I am an avid Float fishermen, mostly steelhead trout. For a medium size river I use anywhere from an 11'6'' float rod up to a 13' 6'' rod. The rod length serves two purposes. One it enables you to keep tthe line off of the water giving you direct contact from the rod tip to the tip of the float, if you are doing longer drifts.. It also serves to protect light leaders when the fish make a run. For smaller home rivers, I actually build a float rod on a 3 or 4 weight fly blank. 10' does the trick. As far as the centerpin reel, if you are new to fishing a centerpin reel, I wouldn't spend big money untill you decide it is for you. You can pick up used ones for $200-$300 on some fishing sites. Some entry level companys are Okuma and Raven. Higher quality reels can cost upwards $600. I have built many float rods and the only real seat I use is by Batson enterprises RA8L2. It is basically a fly reel seat. I would recommend you buy a used set up if money is an issue. Just do a web search on float fishing sites. I don't want to breach the ettiquette of this site and advertise other sites On a side note with guides. If you are fishing all winter, most of us go with larger guides on our float rods to delay the freezing up of the guides. Size 7 or 8 and many use the guide as the tip instead of the tip top guides. I can type about this forevel LOL. Hope this helps, Frank