Quote Originally Posted by Gbcorley View Post
I have sold probably 30 ish crappie rods and every time they come tell me about the same thing. I didn’t know they thumped it that hard. Compared to a standard 30 to 50$ crappie rod it feels like someone hit the rod with a stick at times when they thump it lol. But it’s a tool that’s not for everyone. And I can completely agree I have bass and saltwater guys fork over 500$ all the time trying to get the most out of a rod they can. I mean a titanium torzite guide set for a spinning rod is 180$ and some of the carbon blanks push 300$ And above. We haven’t even got a handle reel seat or my time in that build lol
Yup, the last custom walleye jigging rod I did for a guy was just over $500 bucks! And it would never cast anything. ONLY for verticle jigging. Everybody (including himself) purchased a very specific brand of rod. To say it was the gold standard to be measured by from the community was an understatement. Everybody always talked about how light they were and how sensative they were.

Starting with that claim, I set out to build the lightest rod I possibly could. In the end, I beat that rod out by a large margin in weight. Many people have asked where he got it and he was specifically told NOT to tell anybody!!!! He is also a steelhead fisherman and owned many custom rods so he knew what he was looking for and what he was getting. It took him more than two years of prodding me before I even took on the task of building it for him. Not saying that I was swamped at the time with too many custom jobs but I was very busy with my tackle business and it didn't leave a whole lot of time for building rods for guys. I knew when I finished it that I had something special. I didn't personally want to be wrapped up with building 50 of these for everybody and their brother as time was precious to me. Hence the reason he was told not to tell anybody who built it. On the flip side, if anybody ever asked me, I had zero issues with telling them every componant that went in to that rod in order to make it what it was. I didn't own the recipe to it, I just figured it out.