I read on many post that guys are using eglass blanks for catfish. A friend and I have drifted live bait with say a med action graphite rod and pulled in some nice ones with em. Just wondered if some of you guys have had better luck with glass blanks and is blank diameter and wieght a consideration?

Sammy, I have been having excellent luck with the Seeker LB, CLB and CBS blanks for carping. I don't catfish much anymore but the two are almost identical types of fishing. I am currently building 3 carp sticks on the CLB806 blanks. They have a good fast action glass top end and a butt kicking graphite bottom end. I have whipped some big fish on these blanks in fresh as well as salt water.

The LB series is good also but the butt diameters get a little large on the heavier rods.

I concur on the Seeker CLB series. Some of the very best style blanks I have ever used.

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Sammy,
The moderate action graphite is a good choice as you already can see. What you'll likely gain with using E-Glass is more weight, but the price is less than graphite. So for lighter blanks, stick with graphite. Some good choices for E-Glass live bait blanks you might check out Shikari. St. Croix has excellent S-Glass Classic Cat series of blanks, and a few E-Glass blanks of interest. Blank diameters would generally be larger in diameter than similar wt. graphite blanks.
I'm sure you could still pull up some nice cats with the cheaper glass blanks, and they are powerful, but at sacrificing with a weight gain overall.

Rich
Richard's Rod & Reel

Sammy

I guess I'm one of those you refer to as catfishing with E-glass rods. To tell the turth, I normally fish for cats' with 7 foot graphite rods, ones I use for carolina rigging or deep water crankin'. But I have wanted a catfish only rod for a while, and I had this E-glass blank that was ordered for a saltwater live bait rod. After I got the blank The fellow who wanted it decided on a lighter action rod. The rod he wanted was built and delivered months ago... the unused blank just looked like the perfect catfish blank I wanted, but never bad enough to buy the components for. Funny thing is I have a set of Fuji SICs I might wrap onto it. The only thing I have spend money on now is a reel seat of the right diameter... but I happen to have an Aftco..., well never mind, I already ordered a graphite Fuji for it. The point is, I am making up the component list from parts I already have. Would E-glass be my first choice? Probably not, but they are dirt cheap and weight is not a concern for me because I cast so few times for the amount of time I drift troll. I do think for the money E-glass would do fine for big, deep water cats'.

Bill Doherty

Forgot to add,

Our local catfishermen like stiff, fiberglass cat rods. I have built a couple others for clients. That's how I got the idea to use a E-glass blank for my own.

Bill Doherty

Sammy, you will like the softer feel of the glass rods or composites especially if you do live baiting for cats. Your bait will live longer because it gets jerked around less. You will have a little more give when he mouths the bait and he won't spit it out as fast. When you get a good fish on, you won't notice a little extra blank weight and you will probably appreciate it.

I know very few people that fish graphite for live bait in salt or fresh and I don't recall ever building a graphite live bait rod. Not saying that they won't work though. You would just have to find the right graphite blank.

I have never fished for big cats, but I do fishh for big sturgeon. I like a good sturdy glass rod for these fish.My resoning for this is a glass rod is more foregiving than graphite. Glass well take a cosiderable abuse. Any one who builds a graphite rod will tell you not to fight a fish with the rod wxtend much more than a forty-five degree angle, if you do it may fail. Where you can fish a glass rod at over ninty degrees and have the tip into the water and you can still crank on it
Sturgeon fishing is rough on gear. On the Columbia River in Washington we fish for Sturgeon anchored in currents up to 15 knots and if you are lucky and hook into this ancient fish over 7 feet long (you have to release this fish) and weighing well over 150 lbs. This fish well test you and you rod. In this case I want a glass rod
Bob

Thanks for the helpful views and info guys!