New Canal Weaponry

[Saltheart]

I have decided to build myself a new Canal rod. When you are busy building rods for other people , it gets to be a rare event and a big treat to build one for yourself.

I've been looking into the British made blanks by the people who make the tournament casting rods. Ziplex was the one that got me hot on the idea. After further research and doing some design work , I've decided to build myself one by a different manufacturer on a rod blank made by what is called Autoclave Technology. This means that when the blank is cured , the blank is not only heated , but held under pressure in a pressure vessel. In metals we used to call this Hot Isostatically Pressed (HIP). Anyway , its supposed to allow for the use of graphite and epoxy systems which result in better performance but which couldn't really be manufactured well without the autoclave process. According to my info , this manufacturer's blanks made using the Autoclave Technology are the ones used by the recent World Record Holders in distance casting and were the first to break the 900 foot barrier. They are supposed to be the longest casting rods available today. Like these Worlds Record 13 foot rods , the blank I've chosen is a two piece rod with a reverse ferrel. That means the female part is the butt section.

Anyway , nothing is easy. These blanks are generally too long for the way we fish stripers in New England so I'LL have to do some cutting and I've been playing with the guide layouts.

I hope to have one built as a Canal Rod by the MSBA Show and if I get it done I'll bring it.

Best as I can figure the rods will run about $320 built plain with all Fuji components including a Fuji SiC tip. This is pretty reasonable by today’s standards. If you figure just these tips run about $13 these days , and a similar length Lami has a SRP of about $370 , these rods are high performance and reasonably priced.

I'm going to cut the blanks to get to a rod about 10.5 to 11 feet long. It will be made to cast 3 to 5OZ and could easily handle 6 OZ. Perfect for jigging the canal. Its an extremely powerful blank and should be able to pull big fish up from the bottom in heavy current.

Unfortunately the Autoclave technology is not yet used on lighter blanks so a typical 1 to 3 OZ beach rod build on these type of blanks is not available. This same rod could be left longer for a heavy beach rod but were still talking heavy wood and or bait in the 3 to 6 OZ range.

Anyway , I'm all psyched up to try this thing at Canal. I'm happy with the arra 1205 I currently use but this newer technology has caught my interest so I'm going to try it.