The author caught this rainbow on Depuy Spring Creek, just 24 hours after adding the final coat of Flex Coat. Photo | Paul Weamer
February 20, 2019
By Paul Weamer
When I received a Mud Hole rodbuilding kit a few days before Christmas, I had never built my own fly rod before. I’d thought about delving into the custom rod hobby before, but to tell you the truth I was a little intimidated. I tie flies fairly well, but I’m not exactly a “handy” person. I hoped this kit would change all that.
I was 13 the last time I attempted a custom project. That kit was designed to build a percussion cap pistol—the wooden kind that pirates carried. But that kit had terrible directions, and the pistol I built didn’t resemble the photo on the box. After its completion, one of my father’s friends suggested we shoot it. But even at age 13, I was smart enough to know that igniting gunpowder inside something I had made was probably a bad idea.
More than 33 years have passed between the pirate pistol and the day I opened a box that included a midnight blue, 9-foot 5-weight MHX Native 4-piece fly rod blank ($225, mudhole.com ), Mud Hole’s Basic Rod Building Start-Up Supply Kit ($145), and nearly everything else you need to make a finished rod. Alcohol is the only additional item you’ll have to purchase: denatured alcohol for finishing epoxy guide wraps, and isopropyl alcohol to remove any misplaced epoxy. I also added a bottle of bourbon to my list of supplies to make the whole process as seamless as possible.
The rod-building kit includes an HWS Professional Hand Rod Wrapper (which requires a little assembly and customizing), a CRB drying motor to spin the rod while the epoxied guide wraps cure, and everything else, including pencils to mark the blank, razor blades for cutting thread, guides, tip-tops, glues, and epoxy. The thoroughness of the components and tools gave me comfort—someone very knowledgeable spent time putting this all together. While I started with two different products—a rod-building kit and a rod blank—Mud Hole also has a Turnkey line of fly rod kits that include both the blank and all the supplies in one package. You can save some money doing it that way as well.
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A white mark (below) shows where to place the line guide. A complete instructional booklet and DVD explains how to wrap and epoxy the line guides, and assemble the rest of the rod. All the tools you need to complete a beautiful finished rod are in the kit. Photo | Paul Weamer Mud Hole doesn’t just abandon you with the blank and the supplies. Their rod-building support and instructions are excellent, and make this project accessible for anyone. My rod-building adventure began with a nice spiralbound booklet that walks you through each step of the process. A DVD shows the directions in even more detail. If that’s not enough, Mud Hole has a website with a complete knowledge center and a list of locations for twoday rod-building courses across the country. The booklet and DVD show how to build a spinning rod, but it’s simple to translate that into making a fly rod. [Watch the TV show Techsperts on Sportsman Channel March 24 and 31 at 8:30 a.m. ET to see an entire episode dedicated to building a Mud Hole rod.]
Expertise is part of what Mud Hole is selling here, and I strongly encourage you to adhere to Mud Hole’s recommendations during the build process. For instance, Mud Hole suggests tapping the cork grip to remove dust while reaming the handle. But I decided to blow it out instead. It worked well when I blew through the grip’s narrow end, but then I blew through the wide end, immediately filling my eyes with cork dust, requiring a water rinse to see again. It was decisions like this that turned my pirate pistol into a paperweight.
The only time you might get a little “creative” is with the guide spacing which is already somewhat subjective. Mud Hole suggest ten guides (plus tiptop) for a 9-foot 5-weight fly rod, and provides a complete spacing chart for accurate placement. I used only nine line guides on this build, and used one of my existing rods as a template for the guide placement. That’s one of the joys of building your own rod—you can customize and adapt these rods to get them exactly the way you like.
Photo | Paul Weamer I’ve spent a lot of time in fly shops listening to picky customers complain about the smallest flaws in expensive factory-made fly rods. But I see the slight flaws in my rod differently because I made them. My thread wraps are a little long because I struggled to get the first ones started and then formed the rest to match. The epoxy finish on the wraps isn’t perfect because I found it difficult to remain steady on my kitchen table, and I have a tiny bit of epoxy on the reel seat that I failed to notice when I attached it. I’m still proud of the outcome, given that it was the first time I had done any of this. I plan on getting better; just as I did with tying flies.
Instead of finding imperfections on a $1,000 rod and becoming upset, my flaws make me smile as I remember the process. And when I took the rod for its first fishing trip, it cast a nice line and helped me enjoy the day just a little bit more because I tied the flies and even built the rod I used. And it didn’t even explode in my hand the way my pirate pistol surely would have done. That makes my first Mud Hole fly rod a great success.