Hello everyone,

I’d like some specific suggestions from people with experience building ice fishing gear on what would be a state of the art build in perch and panfish ice fishing gear. I’d like to build two rods for my niece who’s really into ice fishing with her dad. She’s a bit of a tomboy, so no frilly stuff, just pure function. Her goal in life is to be the host of a TV cooking show where she goes out and catches / hunts up the game to be used in that show’s recipe.

I’m looking to build both a shorter ice hut rod and an open ice rod. I believe she fishes mostly with small tipped jigs with and without slide bobbers in water from 5-15’ deep most of the time.

So what would you recommend? Blanks, handle style and material, reel attachment, guide style (including # and size) and any other specialized gear (strike indicators, etc?) that may be included to build. Also, her dad, my brother, will be supplying two new reels for the build so he is looking for recommendations on appropriate (better quality) cold water reels for these builds.

Geez John that is a lot of info, I will give it a shot. Fishing perch in deeper water you have two options. One, a blank (solid fiberglass) with a micro tip that allows for bite detection by watching the tip. The tip section of the rod is so flimsy that you can start to tie an overhand knot out of it. Great for bite detection and cushioning 1 and 2 pound test line when a fish is fighting. Hard to set the hook though. Mud Hole has these blanks, they are orange tipped. Buy the 30 inch length and cut to size.

the second is a solid graphite blank (Mud Hole item CIB-30-MHX) which is a much stiffer rod. The stiff solid graphite makes for a very sensitive rod for feeling the bites. For light biting fishing I suggest you install a spring bobber. Mud Hole SBT-1 or the Frabill coil spring bobber that has an adpator to fit right into ring of the tip top of the rod, or use a St. Croix, which is the best of all. You will have to fabricate a guide with o-ring that fits inside of the guide of which the spring will be held inthe oring. This guide set up can be wrapped on the opposite side of the tip top ring to hold the spring bobber. Solid graphite allows for a very quick hook set in deeper water.

My choice for grips is to build a grip on a graphite sleeve or scrap material (Mud Hole sells them in 10" lengths). I use burl cork and turn down a 3 inch butt grip, 16mm reel seat, and 1/2" forgrip. then I coat the burl cork with two coats of rod finish which makes the grips damn near bullet proof. If you don't want to turn down a grip Mud Hole has complete ice rod handle kits. You can get them in either cork or EVA foam. Our high school outdoors club students just built 21 of these using kit grips of both cork and EVA and they worked well.

Buy the blanks long and cut to size. I suggest buying an extra blank just to mess with to get the action/lifting power that you want. The Berkley or Minnema spin guides work great. You can get them in all ring sizes but the guide feet are thin so you can wrap them on the smallest of blanks.
On a 28" rod i will wrap a 12, a 10, and finish with an 8 with a tip top with an 8 sized ring. If the tip top ring size you want is not available in the tube size you want wrap the tip of the rod with thread to build it up and then epoxy the tip top on for a tight fit.

Grip styles is personal preference. Of the last 30 ice rods I built for customers 21 were with standard 16mm reel seats and 9 were of Tennesse style grips. Your call. Also try the Fuji ergonomic style reel seats. Your entire grip gets shorter with these nice reel seats. I realize you are going for function first but feel free to do some colored foam inlays in the EVA grips or some checkerboard work in the cork grips. They turn out very nice.

If there is anything I have left out shoot me an email. Happy to help.

Buzz

John,
Forgot about reels. There are many quality small spin reels specifically for ice fishing. In the last year a new kind of reel, Straight Line reel is being marketed for ice fishing. They are a modified fly reel. Purpose is to take the twist out of the line caused by standard open faced spin reels. the twist in line will cause the jig/lure to spin in the water which fish, according to the research dont appreciate. A 1 to 1 ratio reel from either Clam (my favorite) or Frabill will cost you about $29.00. Put backing on the reel and then 100 yards of 2 pound test and you should be set. They also have a really nice drag for fish pulling out line and for when you pull out line to get the lure to the fish. For really deep water the 1:1 ratio will take you forever to reel in. If you use the new straight line reel you will have to upgrade the gear ratio and the price goes way up. for deeper water use small open face reel with braided line, tie on a micro swivel to get the spin out and some 2 pound test ice line for a leader.

Buzz

Buzz has some great comments that are right on.

I have just packed a bunch of ice rods for shipment tomorrow.

A couple of them are rods specifically for perch.

In particular, these are the Thorne Brothers "perch - carbon " blanks. They have an action similar to the ones that Buzz referred to. However, these rods are going to be used in an outside environment so they are set up at the full blank length of 36 inches.

If you do some searches, you will find some other suppliers or Ice Rod unique products- handles, blanks and guides. Most of these products are available at very reasonable prices.

About 90% of the rods that I build are built with a 7 inch Tennessee handle with a constant diameter of about 1 inch.
I have tried a bunch of different shapes, sizes and lengths for ice fishing handles but have found that this standard works for about every person who has ever used a rod. Just keep a roll of black electric tape in your box and put a couple of wraps on the rear and a couple wraps on the front reel foot to hold the reel nicely to the grip.

When I set up a rod for exclusive use outside, I use no guides or tips that are smaller than a size 8. Size 8 seems to shed ice well and minimize ice build up on the line as well.

But, if in a shelter, then I routinely set the rods up with size 6 tip and running guide. Most of the rods use either 4 or 5 guides depending on length and rod action. i.e. a more flexible rod needs more guides in the tip section.

The typical shelter rod is also cut back to either 28 or 26 inches. If I am down to 26 or shorter, then it is quite common to go down to three guides on the rod - or in some cases - even two guides for very short rods.

One very important thing for a spinning rod that uses a spinning reel is to make sure that the striping guide is far enough from the reel and tall enough to let the line be reeled back in without any herky jerky action. If you use a guide that is too low or too small or too close to the reel, you will find that the line will jump as the reel is reeled in with the line following the diameter of the reel.

Most of the reels that I use are in the size 1000 range or the 500 range.

Braid works all right if being used in a shelter. But using braid outside - tends to be a losing proposition due to the braid holding water and freezing up.

If you have more questions - just drop me an e-mail:

hflier@comcast.net

Roger

What I found makes nice blanks to work from is the old 50's-60's bait cast rods made from solid fibre glass They can be made up with Tennesee handles & light weight ceramic guides and can be cut to any length necessary they have real great action for jigging or still fishing my next choice would be fly rod tips (glass or bamboo) the action is a little stiffer with these I have used both styles in the past with great results Good Luck & Good Fishing Larry

Larry,
In addition to Larry's comments:
Any solid fiberglass or carbon blank can be ground down to make a rod with the exact action that you would like to have.

I was doing some grinding using a 1000 rpm - chuck. However, I found that by going to another motor that spun at 8000 rpm, I could get the job done more quickly.

I just take the blank piece and put it into the chuck of the lathe style head stock.
Then, I support the blank as needed with a ball bearing rod rest.

I use the foot control to control the speed of the spinning blank and use various grades of sand paper to turn the blank to the diameter that I want for the action that I prefer for the rod that I am making.

When I first started doing this, I was concerned about the cutting speed, so I started with 320 sand paper. But now that I have shaped some blanks, I now start with 40 grit paper to quickly get the blank close to the taper that I want. Then, I progressively go to finer and finer paper until all of the scratch marks are removed and the blank is at the final desired dimension.


I keep a caliper handy to continuously check and recheck the blank diameters as I do the blank shaping.

Another task that we - as rod builders can do - to create the exact custom blank that might be needed by ourselves, or a client.

Be safe
Roger

Okay, based on what I picked up from your posts, I did a little research (now that I knew what to look for).

This is what I'm planning initially:

Inside the shelter rod for sight fishing, option 1) 24-26" "power noodle" style fiberglass blank in a 1-3 lb class, or 2) 24-26" solid carbon in 2-4 lb class. 7" cork fly seat and grip, REC recoil guides (small rings), and Frabill straight line 241 or Okuma SLV 2/3 fly reel

Outside rod walking from hole to hole, 32" solid carbon in 2-4 lb class, syncork handle either in fly or Tennessee style for spin, REC recoil guides (larger rings) and spring bobber: Reel either Frabill straight line 241 or Okuma SLV2/3 fly reel, or Shimano Symetre SY500FJ Spinning

Does it sound like I am heading in the right direction of this? Your thought and comments please...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2012 02:14AM by John E Powell.

John,
Don't over think what you are doing.
This is ice fishing after all. There is no casting, there are no long runs with these fish. There is little to no pressure on any of the guides. You can put any type guides that you want for your rods, but it is not necessary to spend very much money for very nice guides that will work very well for these applications.

The blanks and actions would work very well for your intentions.

You might consider an even shorter rod - like a 17 inch rod for sight fishing. There are a lot of folks who sight fish - lying on their stomach with a blanket over their head to shut out any light - especially if they are fishing out side a shelter. When that is the case, it is nice to have a very short rod.

Syncork is just fine, but foam or cork is fine as well for a handle.
I personally like no metal or plastic or nylon in the handle or reel seat for an ice rod. Any of these materials tend to conduct cold and make your hand colder. So, for this reason, I just prefer the use of a tape on reel to a foam or eva or cork tennessee handle.

Certainly the use of smaller guides for shelter work and larger guides for outdoor work makes a lot of sense.

The setups that you have outlined will all work very well. So much of this thing we call custom rod building is personal preference. That is why we call it custom. We can all make the rod type and style in the exact way that we wish.

Simply put - I use an assortment that looks something like this for myself.
26-28 inch rods for inside work with smaller guides. Some ultra flexible glass and longer for pan fishing with no bobber.
Then, an assortment of slightly stiffer rods in carbon for larger fish and for active jigging.

For outside fishing, I prefer the use of longer stiffer carbon rods with larger guides with an extra fast tip for hole hopping with jigging spoons and jigs.

So, your suggestions and well as my personal likes are really very similar in both function and action.

Good luck and safe fishing.

Roger

Looks like you are ready to go John, build those rods and just as important, catch some fish

Buzz