Rod Butt Mod Revisited...

I got some useful feedback on the kayak fishing rod butt mod on ncangler.com and also, while it seemed sturdy enough, I wasn't happy with the lack of an arbor or the 5-minute epoxy I used. So I cut off the oversize butt (which was too big to fit in tube-type rod holders) and re-did it using better materials. One comment I got was "what about rod balance?". The ergonomics when casting from a seated position is much better and I didn't notice much, if any, difference in rod balance, but since I was re-doing it I decided to experiment with adding a counter weight. I built up an arbor for the new butt using drywall tape, which is made of fiberglass cloth backed with an adhesive. The open weave of the cloth allows glue to penetrate for a strong bond. For the adhesive I used U-40 Rod Bond, which is very tough but retains some flexibility. For the counter weight I rolled out a piece of weighted putty sold for use on pine box derby cars and slipped it inside the rod blank. The butt cap is from Jann's Netcraft.

This worked out fine but I wanted to see if I could go further with the counter weight idea so I picked up a roll of lead tape which is sold to fine tune balance on golf clubs and used it to build up an arbor on another rod I was modding.

The added weight at the butt end gave the rod better balance in the hand- it has a lighter tip feel now. A nice improvement.