special 14-foot rod for "fish you wouldn't want to catch with a 10 foot pole."
To start,realize that you can make special purpose rods — I favor long, very light rods that are stiffer than noodle sticks for my own bait fishing. Such rods also work very well for extra casting distance either from shore or from boats when you might be casting to rises some distance away.
So one of the things I do is take eight- to 10-foot-long trout rods and build them with spinning guides. Such rods are rated by fly line number so I've appended a conversion table.
Help a child or young adult built their own rod and you build fishing interest and anticipation too. I try to help at least one youngster roll their own each year and, after thirty years of this I'm working on a second generation!
Rods start with either kits that include everything — this is a good way to replicate a manufacturer's rods at the price of labor — and parts. Blanks, guides, grips, reel seats etc. can all be purchased alone from firms like St. Croix Rod Company — or a number of middlemen. As a matter of choice I buy parts and put my own rods together from scratch. The specifics are a bit more detailed than I can cover here. So for the theory of rod choices see here.
For the construction process, see here.
Clearly this isn't brain surgery. It's a very easy, if somewhat "picky" and time consuming project that takes two or three evenings. Figure one evening to fit and shape cork rings to the blank butt. A second evening "splines" the rod to determine the stiff side of the blank and wraps on the guides. This evening can finish with a coat of color preserver for the wraps. The last evening or two simply adds coat of preservative to the wraps.
The custom result is satisfying in and of itself, but this compounds with each catch. Now if I can just figure out a way to keep my shorthair from eating rods I'll be set forever.
The process is simple and detailed at length on the Internet
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