spoonplugger1

How heavy of line are you using?

The fish won't know the difference, there are more important things to worry about.

My first smallie rod.was a Berkeley Lighning rod in that weight class. I use a Lamiglas XMG50 LSJ841same weight class for the same thing now, but our fish rarely get over 4 lbs. 1 1/2 pounders are my bread and butter, same with LMB.

The anglers resource article won't help, it's for spinning rods. The extra guides used on rods lately has nothing to do with distributing blank load, it started about 15 years, or so when braided lines really started taking off on surf rods. As you know a surf rod is built with less guides per foot than a bass rod by a considerable amount, this led to the the limp line lassoing guides and damaging guides, throwing off expensive plugs when the line made an abrupt stop, etc. Adding a FEW extra and sometime smaller guides helped greatly as it tamed the loops. As usual only half the info gets passed on, none of the reason for the change is included, it gets hyped up by know nothing press, and the rest goes into the mists of mythology. If you have an older rod with guide lassoing problems, going to a.smaller guide set cures it also. Just like like shooting a .22 lr bullet is more efficient and more accurate than shooting it out of a .30 caliber bore, the exact same reason I like micro guided rods, if 50 lb. mono passes through a 3mm guide with no problems, my braid, fluoro and mono selections are not an issue, and you'll never loop a guide again, almost never have multi rod snagging on your boat deck, and rods go in and out of under deck storage so much better.

Agree 10, maybe 11. How long is your rear grip? 13 inches is to close to the reel, 15 to 18 is about right. Some of my rods are over 20 inches away, static distribution starts at the tip, not some guides back, first guide from the tip should be set with the same criteria as the others, means 1 less guide on most rod right there. The line shouldn't go under the blank, we're adding guides to protect the rod blank from damage and to distribute the load over the entire blank, it's not a beauty contest. Guides used on earlier rods were bigger, heavier and taller. That suggestion was implemented back in those days when you had one guide per foot of rod and sometimes less. With the much shorter guides used today the line naturally rides much closer to the blank all the time, bent, or otherwise, but the loads put on the blank haven't changed and the guides, no matter the height have identical loads put on them and through to the blank, makes it much easier now to build a poorly balanced rod if your guides are 3 or 4 inches apart, than you add weight to the butt to compensate for your bad guide setup, soon you have a graphite rod that weighs more the a well set up glass rod. My salmon/steelhead rods are longer by over a foot and they have less guides, my 10 1/2 ft. rods have 3 less guides than you have on your rod..

If your trying for color and light weight, the Winn grips come to mind, (skinned eva), burl cork rings also work, but burl cork is 3 times heavier than standard cork, the colored foam skinned grips are fiberglass or a combo glass/graphite if they are two tone, the combos are a bit lighter than the cork, the glass about the same. You can get some eva foam from Mudhole and shape it with sandpaper on your hand drill, it will be similar in weight to the Winn grip, slightly heavier than cork. For short split grips just slide the foam over a snug drill bit and go to town. For a clean cut, cut the foam slightly long any way you choose, install on the drill bit, turn it on high speed and final cut with braided line, or "D" size wrapping thread.

Blank power is the problem if your tearing hooks out, blank action has virtually nothing to do with it. Rod designs have no common thread, Heavy means nothing other than it's heavier than a Med Heavy in the same rod line from the same manufacturer, some other rod company may call it X Hvy, or Med Hvy. pick up an inshore rod with the same components, layout and it could be a medium. G Loomis for years used the same exact blank across a spectrum of descriptions and each customer raved about the results not knowing their Mag Bass, Walleye, or Green Water series rod started life a decade before as a Hot Shot rod designed to pull plugs for salmon and steelhead. I know a gentleman who has taken a Hot Shot blank and by adding a long Tennessee grip, he uses it as a fly rod, spinning rod, or casting rod by just placing the reel in the right place, and it works very well. His rods are on the Worried Shrimp web site, if it's still up.

I think you can still get blank EVA rings out there, (no hole), glue it on and shape it to match. Fixed for under a buck, and your rod will only be a half inch longer.

Go to rodbuilding.org, select the library on the upper part of the page, that look for the articles on the New Guide Concept system and the Static Distribution guide layout system. The first is in the upper half of the articles if I remember right, the latter near the bottom. Everything you need to know to build any rod is in those articles.

What your asking for is a tough one, because your wanting us to compare a relatively obscure rod. I've never seen an Evergreen brand rod of any kind, let alone be able to help from your description. You see there is really no such thing as a "heavy" powered rod, there is no standard and never will be. You see the rod you want to compare to was designed to present a specific group of lures, line ratings, power ratings, action, are all subjective. It was added on after they had gotten the blank right, no thought was given to what was later put on the rod. You'd be much better served when selecting a rod by telling someone what weight lure the rod has to throw, and then present properly, what type/weight line your using, do you need to pass a knot through your guides, etc. That all said, I've found the Rod Geek SG70MHM to be a great chatterbait blank for me and my customers throwing 1/2 oz. baits for the most part. You can extend the blank if you need to or go to the longer SG79MHM for more length. Another positive for some is that you can get the blanks in a variety of colors.

I have the earlier CB76 and 80H RX7 blanks built for big plugs, 22s are no problem, extended some of them to 9 ft. and cast big MagLips, HotShots, HotnTots, TadPollies, etc for salmon also.

Glass and composites has made a comeback, the most popular US built salmon rods are composites, their reduced reaction times help keep the fish hooked, the graphite helps them carry up to 20 oz. of lead without being cumbersome. The combination makes for a durable rod. Skeeter Reese when he was sponsored by Lamiglas used an E glass blank the MB841E for his crankbait rod, over the years before that, the same blank could be bought both in S glass and Triflex which was a glass tipped rod with a graphite wrapped butt beginning about 2/3 up, the graphite flag was at an angle at the tip, so the stiffness was progressive and the larger diameter butt, thin walled. Both blanks were 3/8 oz. less weight then the E glass blank, all were built on the same mandrel. This blank and it's other MB bretheren have been, and still are, popular in the salt back east. My SMB841 S glass and CMB841 Triflex composite crankbait rods have been used for trolling for steelhead with plugs in the Columbia River, then caught sea bass, flounder, and other bottom fish the next day. Specialization, or the selling of the concept has sold a whole bunch more gear and tackle than ever before. Not so long ago, prior to Shimano, the old G Loomis catalogs would list all their rods and than list all the fish species he thought the same rod would be good at catching, some were a dozen species. Some of his hotshot blanks were built as hotshot rods for salmon/steelhead the HSR, an Mag Bass MBR, walleye WR and Green Water series the GWR, all the same identical blank, and same length, of course the grip lengths and other components were selected for each species requirements.

If I remember right, the Mojos are built on the same SCII blank, components are different.

The blank is stiff like many St. Croix, works great at the bottom end 3/8 oz. rating, but not much under it, however it does well in the top end, easily exceeding the 1 oz. rating on some large cranks and swimbaits we threw. You can drop down one power if need better light gear performance, the 5/8 oz. upper limit can be extended to 3/4 oz., or maybe a bit more. The Fenwick World Class rods I tried weren't in the same league as the Bass X rods.

Though I'm a custom builder, I've done some fishing this year around some industry people and got to use their new offerings. One rod stood out in your price range, and was built to be a versatile rod geared more toward your favorites. The St. Croix BXC71MHF.

Tyler, It depends on what you want, what is your core presentation, the presentation you have the most confidence in and use a lot? Than you'll know where to start. Stay away from most X fast rod blanks if you want a versatile rod, they are usually more specialized, for more specific needs.

The St. Croix 5C70MHF makes a fanatastic rod and you shouldn't have any problem finding a factory rod to handle with your reel of choice on it. If you can go one lighter the medium blank in this series makes even better rods that are up there with the finest from anyone and just flat fun to fish with.

Depends on the situation, S glass, or composites for reaction baits, for everything else graphite.

Have some travel rods from different manufacturers, G Loomis 3 pc. GLX spinning rod, awesome and been that way all over the world for 15 years. Steelhead, salmon, bonefish, inshore. 3 pc. St. Croix Premier ML spinning, multiple canoe portaging trips, awesome. Peacock Bass rod, 3 piece Rainshadow RX7 Hvy action blank, way past awesome, have caught peacock bass, catfish, pike, musky, salmon, LMB, Lake Trout and inshore species on it. If you fly into the bush, portage, anywhere where there are size restrictions, yu want to have a god travel rod. Durability issues, bull pucky, never happened, never will, keep the ferrules tight and fish them like any other rod.

Loaded question, build it right, it will be better. Build it like the production rod, not so much.

My favorite drop shot blank still is the US built Rainshadow RX8+S822.5 which is no longer available, get with Batson to find out what is it's replacement. I use micro-guides. Hope the pics got to you.

Bassout, There was a time when some made their dropshot rods for exactly your purpose with the long foregrip and short rear grip, made for a very balanced light in the hand setup. Rogue Rods was the only production factory rods that I remember. Might have a graphite tube gripped version still around if you would like a pic. Some took a short cigar grip used on the lighter powered fly rods and used that as their foregrip.

There is a weight reduction, but the original prime mover was that no matter what rod, or grip length, it only took 10 premium cork rings to get the job done. A standard 9 inch grip takes 18 rings, a 14 inch grip 28. If you liked the older Castaway rods with the long exposed bottom on the reelseat, CUI still makes it last I needed some, Bingham Ent. is where I bought them, Karen will have everything you need for your build.

I've used and built a few, they are larger diameter blanks by today's standards and they have no taper to speak of in the area where you put your grips and reelseat. Being made with a larger diameter blank they get a stiffer rod out of the same amount of graphite and therefore the same amount of weight and I find them to be a bit better balanced and livelier in the hand when built with the same components as other blanks, I think this has to do with the blank diameter also, all the components in the grip are naturally lighter. Since power and line/lure weight have no accepted standard I don't know how to comment on that, other than to say, I've had no problem with them and they are excellent casting blanks in accuracy, and distance, especially distance.

When you don't use color preserver on the thread it becomes opaque, easier to see through to the guide foot, as you can see in your photos you can see the unpacked and unburnished thread wraps also.