I just finished building my first rod

[Robert]

I just finished building my first rod. I recently started fishing with Alvey reels. The trouble is there are virtually no rods available for Alvey reels other than the ones from the Alvey site. Unfortunately the rods they offer do not have the kind of action and construction for the kind of fishing that we do in the surf in Southern California. Most of us, myself included, like the action of the graphite steelhead rods for the surf. I couldn't afford to have a one custom made. My only option was to make my own. I didn't want to blow a whole lot of money on my first blank for obvious reasons. You never know how the first one will turn out. I looked all over the internet and there were lots of nice steelhead blanks out there. I like the action of IM6 graphite. I have several spinning and baitcasting rods made from IM6 and they work good for me. Light, sensitive, and great backbone. I chose the 9ft 2 pc Fish Eagle 2 IM6 steelhead blank from Cabela's. They were on sale for $24.99. The price was sure right. It is really a beautiful blank. It had a black and green pattern that looks pretty cool. I figured if I screwed it up it would be no big deal. I also went with Fuji Hardaloy guides and a Fuji delux reelseat. I picked up a deluxe rod building kit from Cabela's. It came with a dvd from Flexcoat that was very helpful. After checking out the dvd a few times I was confident I could do this. Things went pretty smooth. I had the grips, reelseat, and tip top on in no time. It took me several attempts to wrap the guides, but I got it done. Putting the finish on was no problem.
Here is the finished rod.







It didn't turn out too bad. It has great action and will be a lot of fun to fish with. I'm planning on building a few more and maybe a 6wt fly rod also.
I'm going to try it out Saturday.

Robert