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Wichita Matches Build Their Own Fishing Rods!

December 27-28

Three matches spent all day Saturday and all of Sunday afternoon, building their own spin casting fishing rods, thanks to Pass It On and the Custom Rod Builders Guild!

It all began with the fly fishing BFAD held in August of 2003 with the Flatland Fly Fishing Club. The week after that event, BBBS received a call from Neal Hall, President of the Custom Rod Builders Guild, expressing their interest in getting involved with the Pass It On program. Neal had been one of the volunteer Bigs at the fly fishing BFAD. He had contacted other guild members, telling them of the Pass It On program and received great interest from everyone.

With over 500 members scattered all over the country, coming up with how to get involved wasn't a big problem. "We'd like to offer rod building classes to BBBS Bigs and Littles", indicated Neal. And Neal set to work to put the program in motion. He contacted manufacturers of the components needed to build a fishing rod and got commitments from them to provide the materials at no cost to BBBS participants. The CRBG already had a number of rod building tool kits available.

From there, it was a simple matter of finding the time to do the class. It takes between 12 and 16 hours to build a fishing rod. The weekend after Christmas was chosen for the first class.

And everyone learned a great deal more about fishing rods than they probably thought there was to know! Did you know that a fishing rod has a spine? Did you know that there is really quite a bit of science that goes into positioning the guides along the rod? With the assistance of Neal, all of the participants found the spine of their rod, accurately positioned the line guides, and built some really nice looking spin casting rods! You can bet that those off-the-shelf rods in the retail stores aren't put together with the care and accuracy of these custom rods!

Little Dylan was heard to comment, "This is just like arts and crafts at school!" And there was certainly some art to the building process. If you check out the Rod Builders Guild website, you will see some amazing examples of the artwork that can be applied to a custom rod.

As the session wrapped up, everyone was planning that first trip to the pond to see how the new rods will work!

A special thanks goes out to Neal Hall and the Custom Rod Builders Guild for making this opportunity available to BBBS matches. Given the success of this initial event, we look forward to more matches being able to build their own fishing rods. We also want to thank St.Croix, Lamiglas, Batson Enterprises, Pacific Bay, Gudebrod, and Flexcoat for donating the components used in building these fishing rods. Support like this makes it possible for us to Pass It On!

Big Mike and Little Dana help Neal assemble the rod building jigs that were used for the project.	Neal helps Little Dylan mark the position of the line guides as Big John looks on.	Neal is demonstrating how to wrap the line guides to the rod as the students watch attentively.
Neal is pointing out some of the finer points of wrapping the line guide to the rod to Little Dylan.	Littles Dana and John are admiring the class's handiwork!

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