I got a call from someone today asking me if I could make him a 3 1/2 foot casting rod to use for fishing under bridges for crappie.
He said the longer rods are too hard to deal with under a bridge.
I have never built anything this short, but it should be no problem if I can get a blank short enough.
He wants it about medium action so it will have anough strength in case he catches a 2 or 3 pound bass while fishing for crappie.
Any blank suggestions?
I am not sure I can cut enough off of a longer blank for this.

Larry,
Find a blank that has a tip with the action that you want. Cut the butt of the rod to 3 1/2 feet. Put on about a 6 inch back grip and a reel seat with no fore grip and you will be good to go.

Roger

You could try an ice rod as well. MHX has light 42" ones.

Larry,

Roger's advice is good. I was toying with the upper 2 sections of a Batson SB781-3 a while back, and it seemed like it would make a pretty sweet short rod for crappie and bass. My father prefers short rods, and this type of thing would be up his alley. It is a little longer than 3.5' though. I think if you chopped down a fast action 1/8-3/8 SB or SJ type blank, you would be in pretty good shape for the application.

Joe

What about a solid fiberglass blank in that range. Thorne bros offers one 72" that can be cut down. The tip can be sanded to get a soft tip so its not pulling through the mouths of the crappie but still has enough backbone for an occasional bass or northern that troll the same water. I make ice rods and do that. I was amazed at how many crappie I was missing due to pulling through. This is why I got into building rods. Couldn't find the right actions for my fishing and have since tranformed that into making rods to my exact liking for summer fishing. The fiberglass rod won't have the feel of a graphite rod but is more durable and forgiving for close quarter fishing. Then again graphite rods means more business,lol.

Chip,
I have to agree with you on this one.
When you start working with shorter rods, you begin to start seeing a lot of broken rods.
Simply put, when a rod is short, there is not as much blank to absorb the shock and runs of hard fighting fish.
Certainly, if the folks are only catching Crappies, it will be a non issue.. But if a bass or northern happens to hit, and if a person begins to high stick the fish, the end result will likely be a broken blank.

Your idea of using a solid glass blank, on the other hand will take care of that issue.

I have also made many many ice fishing rods. I, as you do, will sand the blank as needed to get the desired action from the rod.
After having many hollow ice rods broken due to careless handling or stressing the rod on a big fish; I no longer make any ice rods that are not solid. In the hundreds of ice rods that I have made in the last few years, I think that I can count on one hand the number of the solid rods that have broken. As far as I know; none of these reported broken rods were broken on a fish. Nearly all of them were broken when they were left on the ice and someone either stepped on the rod, or drove over it with a vehicle.

Take care
Roger