Ive been thinking about building my own fly rod lately and was wondering if there were any shops around houston that would carry the necessary materials and have somebody with at least a little expertise. Also does anybody know of fly rod builders in houston?

Hello Nick.

I don't know about rod building resources in the Houston are, but can suggest some excelent web sites. In no particular order, I reccomend checking out Mud Hole, Hook & Hackle, and J Stockard. All three provide great service and amazingly quick shipping.

Last year I put together a H&H Tradition 2wt 6'6" kit. It was so much fun for pulling bream out of my local creek, that I ordered a 2nd kit.

JS has some very flexible options with their kits. You can choose grips and reel seats to go with a particular rod blank. You can also order with adhesives and instructions or without.

Good luck with your rod building endeavors. The only problem with catching fish on your own rod is that you might wish you could have made the reel and line.

I agree with Grashpr9 about the Hook & Hackle folks. Never dealt with the others so cannot speak of them one way or another. Been around a while so probably good enough.

If you just need to get to a brick store, Bass Pro or Cabelas might have what you need. But give them a call first, no point in driving there for nothing.

I don't know who is in that area. meadowlark used to be quite near Houston. Then again, try connecting up with these folks in Houston Texas Flyfishers (Houston)

I built casting and fly rods for myself and friends for years - casting blanks on the old Fenwick blanks and ALL my flyrods on Sage blanks except one Loomis .... UNTIL TFO came along with high quality affordable fly rods.

They are a lot of fun to build if you are into fly rod mechanics/physics or want to meet a special need.

I wanted Sage technology for $200 - $300 bucks - I would NEVER pay $600 bucks for a fly rod.

I enjoyed "rolling my own" and learned a LOT about fly rods in the process.

Give it a shot - TFO has flyrod kits for most of their most popular flyrod series.

George Glazener

I built a favorite on a St Croix Blank, I used polyurethane on the threads as I see epoxy cracking all the time, plus, polyurethane is lighter.

Think about it.


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thanks a lot guys, ill be sure to look at those sites in particular, ill probably wait and double this up with a giant project im supposed to do in the next year

also a question about the difficulty of building my own, ive seen people say it was the hard, and very easy. is it only hard if youre unprepared when you start?

Building your own rod doesn't have to be difficult. Just plan carefully and don't rush things.

Mistakes can happen. I've had near-perfect wraps of thread come loose just after being secured. Then there was the time I mixed two parts of resin and no parts of hardener. I carefully applied the epoxy, but it was was a sticky mess the next morning.

MudHole has a Rod Building 101 page with videos and PDFs. You can start with the basics and move on to fancy decorative thread art.

I prefer to keep things simple and just use one color of thread. I recently purchased a bunch of cork rings so I can turn my own grips. After I do that, I might have to get fancy with the thread wraps.

Another great resource is rodbuildingforum.com. A few guys there even made their own reels.

just one more question, i just use epoxy on the wrappings?
okay that was a lie. ill have more questions

Rod finish epoxy is one option - don't try using regular epoxy. You can also use a urathane finish or rod varnish.

Most kits come with a packet of epoxy for the reel seat and grip and a few packets of rod finish for the wraps. The rod finish must be carefully measured and mixed to ensure a good finish. The packets eliminate the need to measure.

so i would use epoxy to attach hardware too it, and then put finish or epoxy on the wraps
and use rod varnish on the rest of it?

and once i do that arent i supposed to spin it around so everything doesnt collect on the bottom?

Yes, yes, no. If you were building a bamboo rod, you would need to varnish the whole thing. Graphite blanks don't require varnish. I think some folks who build fiberglass rods like to use varnish on the threads.

Rods should definitely be turned after coating with epoxy finish. To prevent sags you can manually rotate every 15 minutes or so. Better yet, have a low RPM motor turn it for you.

thanks a ton
i had done a fair amount of research but was still sort of confused, and you cleared that up pretty damn quickly

I will be building my own fly rod shortly, just need to buy some components (seat, guides etc..) and get started.

where are you from cole?

From Ennis, but live in Tulsa while the other half attends law school.