Greetings to all. I've been away from building rods for 4-5 years. But I've been fishing the rods I built (a lot) and have accumulated enough breakage to get the rod building stuff back out and get going again. My rod building equipment has been in the attic, and I got it out this week. I have rods on the dryer as we speak.

First, let me say thank you to St Croix, Pacific Bay and Batson. All have provided warranty service in one form or the other. I have a broken switch rod, a broken normal fly rod and a previously broken spinning rod that have been piling up and awaiting renewed interest in fixing the rods that broke, and making a few more. All the breakage was basically my fault (except the rod my brother stepped on!), and fully disclosed.

My absolute favorite rod that I have built is an 8 weight 9'6" SCV St Croix fly rod. I built it in the winter of 2013 and it's been awesome from the day it was made. I have caught hundreds of Alaskan Coho salmon on it. Seriously it gets no better than this. I would guess that 99% of the blanks I buy from now on, will be St Croix. I have not broken this one. The only St Croix I broke, was a spinning rod, that was hit by a heavy lure that was recoiling off a snag and then folded where hit. That rod, is back in service. Thank you, St Croix, they are the best.

Anyway, happy to be back, and I'm sure I'll have questions for the collective.

Here's the first one: What is the experience with "rodgeeks" blanks? They are new since I was last here. They look pretty good, but I have no idea what "Carbon 4" means.

Drew

Rodgeeks makes an excellent product.

St. Croix SCIV graphite is similar to the Rod Geeks Carbon 4.