I'm just getting into rod building and have built 3 rods so far. I've been struggling to find a 36' medium heavy fiberglass rod blank for ice fishing. I have found 2 on mudhole, but they have orange or yellow tips near the end. I'm tryign to build a rod for a friend as a gift and would prefer to not have the colored tip. Silly? Certainly, but any suggestions would be great as google as not produced results. Thanks TRH

You could always sand down/off that colored tip and paint the rod. I have down quite a few ice rods with sanding down and painting with Krylon Fusion, and it works as well as looks great. If not wanting to get into the stripping of a rod and painting, check out JannsNetcraft or Schneiders (Sponsor on the left here).

Todd,
If you want to use a 36" - not 36' blank fiberglass rod for ice fishing, I would suggest that you use the Batson, solid glass 6' rod blank and trim it to the length that you want, by cutting off from the butt section.

I have built many many many medium heavy rods for catching big fish up north using this blank. This is by far the favorite rod that I sell for catching big Walleye up north in Canada. It is also the perfect rod for catching big trout or northerns.

I don't know exactly how your client might be using the rod, but most of my clients want the rod in a 40 inch length for their outdoor fishing.

From Batson -- .385"X.105"X 72" -- solid glass blank:

[www.rainshadowrodblanks.com]

This is about a $10 blank and is virtually indestructible.

By the way, this blank is a solid gloss black blank which builds up into a very attractive rod.

Since most of the rods are used out of doors, and folks like to minimize any cold transfer to their hands; the rods are built with cork tennessee grips to avoid any plastic, nylon, or metal reel seats which tend to conduct cold. Rather, the reel is taped onto the cork blanks for great feel as well as cold transfer avoidance.

By the way, for all of the ice fishing rods that I build, I only build solid graphite or solid glass blanks. For the blanks that need to have a flexible tip, I generally use a solid glass blank, due to the ability of the solid glass to bend a great deal without ever breaking.

When I used to build hollow graphite blanks, the vast majority of them ended up breaking due to their extreme thin tips and fragile nature used in extreme conditions. This was true for my own rods as well as the rods that I built for clients.

Hence, the reason that I switched to building only solid ice rods as most of the other folks do in this north country to fish out of doors in cold or very very cold weather.

Be safe

Roger Wilson & Blair,


Thanks much for the responses, this was ahuge help. I will post a picture when completed.

Todd