Custom Crappie Rod Adaptation

[Midway Tommy]

About 30 years ago, when my son was a young teenager, he bought himself a 10' telescopic Crappie Rod. It was actually a fairly decent pole and also had a reel seat. I always gave him a lot of crap about that wimpy stick but during our many trips to MN I watched him have a lot of fun catching perch, crappies & bluegills off the dock.

A couple of years later I had started making my own rods. I happened to be looking at fishing equipment in at KMart one day and noticed they had an 8' burgundy two piece fiberglass telescopic pole on closeout for $3. It was really cheaply made and only had a line wrap, no reel seat, and had junk plastic sliding guides but I thought, heck, I can make a cool panfish rod out of that silly thing. I drug it home and it sat around for 15 or 20 years waiting for me to tackle it. Figuring out how to guide it always ended up being a brick wall. I never liked any of the sliding guides that I had seen and I really wanted something that was functional and looked cool. I bought 4 American Tackle chrome holographic ring guides. I'm not a holographic guy but I though it would be different than anything I had. I messed with a couple of guide ideas but I really didn't like their probable longevity. Finally about 3 years ago I came up with an idea that I thought would be functional, last and look neat. I had a brain fart last summer one day and broke the tip so I figured while I had it apart repairing it I'd give you guys a look at it.

Here's a similar, although different color, pole, to give an idea of what it looked like before I started the conversion.


These are the garbage guides that came on it. They really are cheap junk.


Since it's purpose is panfish I didn't see any need for more than 3 guides and a tip top. Two of the guides needed to slide up and down the tip section, be somewhat evenly spaced and fit snugly on the tip section. I had some poly tubing and decided to use that to carry the guides and wraps. I used two different diameters and filed the insides so that they would fit at equal spacings. I wrapped them and gave them a couple of coats of epoxy rod finish. They turned out really well. 


Originally there was no guide on the butt section. I put the first guide on the tip of the butt section figuring a permanent guide and good wrap would strengthen that joint area. Here's all the guides, wrapped.


I like Tennessee style cork grips with slip rings. I had to lengthen the cork area a little because the line winder screwed up the finish in the rod and I didn't feel like refinishing the entire butt section. I had to put the first decorative wrap over one of the screwed up areas, too. Here's what the rod looks like with my ABU Garcia Cardinal 3 attached.


And, here, extended out to 8'.


It does catch fish, too. It brought in this 4.5lb smallie, some smaller smallies & a 5lb northern a couple of years ago in MN. 
   
 

[Crow]

That looks great ! Those "wimpy" sticks definitely have their place. The ones I have aren't "telescopic", but long, and "wimpy" will throw a very small bait, a very long ways ! Those guides are cool, too !

[Alto Mare]

Very nice job Tommy and functional.
I love that last pic... proof is in the pudding😉

My son stole a couple of 7 ' fiberglass vintage South-bend rods from me, they're very soft action and loves to use them on perch and bass.
He has a 430SS on one and 450SS on the other.
That reminds me, I need to check that 450SS, he said the dog skipped every once in a while.
Thanks for showing us Tommy 👍

Sal

[happyhooker]

Love it--something a bit out of the ordinary.  Nice work on those guides.

Frank

[The Fishing Hobby]

That turned out nice! The first rod I ever built was made out of a black widow telescopic "cane" pole...the kind where you just tie a line on the end of the rod. I epoxied the top 2 sections together and ditched the 3rd section to make the 12' rod into a 7' ultralight blank to build on. Turned out nice and worked really well too. Unfortunately I hit some rough water in my kayak. Went for an unintended swim in a creek and lost it one day a few years ago.

[oc1]

Wow.  The guides look really nice... like jewelry.
-steve

[Donnyboat]

You always do nice work, thanks for showing us, cheers Don.

[steelfish]

I like it, specially the wrap on the guides

[Midway Tommy]

Thanks for all the compliments, Guys!  I tried to wrap it with colors that are in the rings. I think it ended up really bringing those colors out without making the whole thing look gaudy. I could tell after the first full wrap it was going to look pretty cool.