I finished this rod up a few months ago but I think I forgot to post it. This build was a concept design, I had nothing in my rod line up that was a good hole hoping rod that could handle the small size of a 4mm or 5mm tungsten jig. I took a 32″ Sportmans Direct extreme taper carbon blank and chucked it in my drill lathe and sanded down the tip to make it more of a light action fast tip. The idea was to give the tip just a slight preload when a previously mentioned tungsten was tied on. Then because it was being built as a hole hopping rod I wanted it longer than 32″ so I found a old beat up rod I had laying around and cut about 10″ off of it and epoxied it to this blank to extend the blank to a full 36″. With the added weight of the long blank I wanted to cut as much weight as I could so I went with a split grip design wit a PacBay Minima reel seat. Even though it is perfectly balanced the way I like my ice rods (just an every so slight weigh forward balance) the slip is about a half an inch to far apart a correction I will be making in my next hole hopper. Of course I can’t leave things well enough alone so I painted the blank white and added the basic thread work. I had just a few pieces of that EVA laying around (wish I could get a lot more of it because its awesome) and having been trying to figure out what the heck I was ever going to do with it. Threw on a few recoils because I had them laying around and this is what I ended up with. It may not be a TUCR but she sure is pretty. I haven’t gotten much of a chance to fish it yet having been gone for a month for work and having a truck that is dead but hopefully starting next week I will be able to get it out a few times and see how she fishes on some hungry perch.
