Hey ya'll,

I'm thinking of building a spincast set up for my 3.5 year old. I got the NFC SJ543 SM and was wondering what your thoughts might be on components. Particularly the reel seat. I know that a typical casting seat will push a spincast reel up off the blank a bit, but I was thinking that when she grows into the SB5100 I also got her (because I didn't know that NFC had sales multiple times throughout the year) I will make that a spinning rod for her.

I was also thinking that one of them will be turned into a BFS rod for me when she's done with it, or at least when she's not using it. Any recommendations or advice for a build like this.

Building rods in MA, Building the community around the world

Spincast rods are built just like casting rods. Use a casting seat, trigger is nice to have.

..........

If you are planning on using a low profile BFS reel on it besides the spincast reel you may want to size the butt guide for the BFS reel (the spincast reel won't mind).

El,
If the plan is to eventually move her right to spinning reels, I'd reccomend starting her off with an underspin reel instead of spin cast. Same concept but instead of thumb button , they have the trigger that imitates holding the line with pointer finger. Easier transition to spinning IMHO. If thats the case you'd want to build the rod as spinning.

As a bonus you have an excuse to build another rod for your BFS. LOL

I'd just build her a spinning setup; just as easy to cast as a spin cast.

El,
I appreciate your thoughts.

However, to put it simply, it doesn't make a lot of sense to build a rod for a 3.5 year old.

Rather, go to one of the big box stores and buy a snoopy rod for her for a few $$ and move on.

But, if you want to take this time to build a rod that will be suitable for her by the time she gets to 6 or +6, then go ahead and build a rod for her that she will be ready to use when she gets older.

Actually, for my kids, when they were small, I would simply have them use my ice fishing rods and that worked out really well.

At this time , the kids are likely to be fishing for pan fishing that will not take any casting. Just hold the rod over the side of the boat and have the fish come up and bite the baited hook.

Also, when the kids were all quite young, I had rigged all of them with zebco reels with inexpensive rods.

After the 4th line tangle for each of the kids, I asked them for each of their rods.

I took off each of the reels and pitched all of them into the deepest water in the lake with a vow to never ever have a reel of this sort in my boat ever again.

There never has been such a reel in the boat since then.

Then, I picked up nice inexpensive spinning reels for each of the kids and set up rods for each of them. It took all of them about 30 minutes of coaching until they were all casting their lure or baited hook a nice satisfactory distance and we never ever looked back.

Don't under estimate the ability of young ones to learn quickly and very well.

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With respect to a rod. A few examples:

[www.google.com]

p.s.
The very best sort of rod for a very young child is a simple 5 foot cane rod or light fiberglass rod. Tie on 5 feet of line with a baited hook on it and go to a spot where there are plentiful pan fish. Simply have the young one swing the rod over the side of the boat and let the fish hook themselves and they can swing it back into the boat to be removed from the hook.

Or, a rod like this one:
[www.walmart.com] -- this one - complete costs $10 and it will catch fish just fine.


You can put a reel on it or not, it is up to you.



Take care



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2023 10:02PM by roger wilson.

Thanks for all the feedback yall!

@Roger, I very well may have been getting ahead of myself and was aware of this at the time of purchase haha. I accidentally ordered a blank longer for her than I realized and then ordered another - I did this just starting out a few months ago and didn't realize that NFC sales were often enough to have waited. I have sort of pigeon holed myself into building her now 2 rods, but maybe I'll just turn one of them into a BFS rod. I think she has a little spincasting kids rod that I'm not sure is actually supposed to be used to fish, but It has real line on it so I could probably just throw a tiny hook and a little worm on there.

I guess I'll now have to make a BFS blank post

Building rods in MA, Building the community around the world

Ed,
Actually when my grand daughters were about 6 or 7, I made a pair of pine 5 foot ultra light rods for them.
They didn't use them a lot but they had fun when they did.

I had purchased the blanks from the Mudhole close out section for about $4 per blank.

It kept me off the streets for a few minutes and put a smile on the girls faces.

Actually, the oldest one is now expecting her first children. She is expecting twins. My my - how babies change and grow.

"The very best sort of rod for a very young child is a simple 5 foot cane rod"

My Grandmother gave me a "cane rod" once in awhile when I was a kid, but it wasn't for fishing. :(