Broken Fishing Rod? Try This!

We have all managed to break a fishing rod whether it was a tip in a doorway or ceiling fan. All we need to do is clean up the tip section and replace the rod eye tip. A few of us have also broken the fishing rod further down the rod by horsing a fish that was not ready to come to the landing net or the fish grip. However, I now have managed to include on the list having a fly with a barbell eye hot my fly rod. This created a soft area on the rod that I was not aware of till the top section separated under the snake eye wrap.

I was totally bummed as this was the first fly rod that I had built. So I could not reach out to the manufacturer for a replacement section. The bright side is that this gave me an opportunity to try to repair the rod section. I’m sure that whatever I do will modify the rod’s performance in casting or fighting a fish. My thought of doing a repair would incorporate a splice of something to put this section from two pieces into a single functional section.

Now that I had some type of plan or crazy idea to repair my fly rod, I had to find a piece of a tapered carbon tubing that would represent the taper of that broken section. One approach would be to run to Walmart to purchase a cheap light weight pole or go through my collection of broken rods for something that might work. To save a some money I opted to go through my broken rod collection.

I did managed to fine an ultra-light panfish rod That might work. So I cut a section that I could clean up by removing the thread and eyes and using a utility knife to cut a piece long then what I needed. I also cleaned up the fly rod section that will be repaired. I used a fine sandpaper to remove any splinters from the broken ends. Then I slowly inserted the panfish section until it is sort of tight. I then marked this area with a marker. And then removed the section, placed a mark an inch and a half from the center mark and using the utility knife to remove the excess material.

Next is applying some type of epoxy to join the three pieces together. You could use 5 minute epoxy but when it dries it is a not very flexible, so I decided to using an epoxy that is slow in the drying process, my thought on the slower the process the more flexible the joints will be.

The last process is wrapping the repaired section and applying a finish to cover the thread work. I used a 50:50 solution of water based poly and water to coat the threads till you can’t feel the thread wraps.

The final test had to be on the water. Since the fly rod is a 5wt I decided to throw a kreelex fly for bass. The fly rod held up fighting eleven bass and bream that day. I have to say that this approach was a success for me.