Build your own rod - Choosing the blank

This is the second part of the Build your own rod- series and we will handle the topic of choosing the right blank.

Build your own rod - Basic tools and materials

Building your own rod has something special, like creating something for yourself after your very own desire.

I've been building rods for several years now, but wouldn't call me a professional in rod building. There are so much guys out there doing this as a full time job and they create pure pieces of art.

My rods are more or less functional based, I think because I don't have that much patience on doing the fancy stuff.

But what I learned from talking to other guys about rod building is, that a lot of fisher man are aware of starting to build their own rod because of the quite overwhelming topic on how to start and what you need to build a rod. I always say that it's not that complicated and with a little bit of skill you will manage to build a rod with that you can catch fish.

Sure the first one doesn't look like a piece of art, but the more you practice, the better the result will become.

For that reason I will show you in a series of posts how to start rod building and you might get a little bit addicted to it.

From Zero to Zero. At least you know nothing

While scrolling through all of my old fishing pictures, I found on that amazed me more than all the others. The story behind is the following:
It’s Christmas 2012 and a yung man got his first fly tying vise. In the local fishing shop the bought a zonker patch and some dubbing.
In this hour he tied his first fly ever.


Seven years later I see this picture of my very first tied fly ever and I look back at the progress I made since then. Without any knowledge of flytying and flyfishing I started and tried to make my may.

There were a lot of ups and downs through the whole way, mistakes and eye openers. The Internet is a great opinion to build up knowledge on how to do and not to do, but it can also be frustration because you were overwhelmed by all these great fishing pictures and big fishes compared to your catchless tries and “failures”.
My opinion is, that you have to find the right path between getting inspiration from all of the content and practicing it on the vise and test it at the water.

Recently I caught myself thinking I know a lot of stuff related to flytying and flyfishing, but I immediately realized that I only see the tip if the iceberg and there is so much more to learn.
More materials, more techniques, different use cases and so on.

In the end I feel a little bit like Jon Snow in Gmae of Thrones. After seven seasons of flytying I think I know a lot of stuff, but in the end I have to admint that I know nothing.

The one bite

You strip your fly through the water.

You strip your fly and throw it back. You don't search the fish, you know it's down there in the pool. You have confidence in your doing and in your fly. You know every second the desired tug can happen. And then, out of the sudden like the RKO of Randy Orten, you can feel the pull in your line and the hell of a fight is starting.
This is why you flyfish for the toothy predators. 
Nevermind if you're at a Lake, River or in the Salt. Only this pull counts.