Anyone have a 16 foot bass boat?  They were clearly made when people were using 5.5-6ft rods.  I can fit 7 ft rods in my rod locker, but I have to kind of wrangle and scrape them in.  Does anyone have a better solution? (other than buy a bigger boat or shorter rods).

If there is any wiring up in the front of the boat, make sure it's pulled up and fasted as mush as you can get it out of the way.   If you have the rod tubes in there, take them out and use those rod socks that look like they are made out of same stuff as those Chinese Fingers on all the rods.  

Unless you can come up with a rod locker stretcher, not much you can do beyond that. unless you want to start using shorter rods, two piece rods or telescoping rods.  

My boat's a 1984 model Ebbtide with a 15'6" LOA, and it has next to zero storage. The rod locker is a little cubby that runs up the port also got my nav lights and emergency stuff in it, so none of the rods we take are gonna fit in there.

 

Best I've figured out to do is lay the rod butts down in front of the passenger seat and let the tips rest on the deck under where the trolling motor stows. There's a little velcro scrap that's riveted to the front deck there and I (very loosely) secure that strap over the rod tips to keep them from beating themselves to death whilst we're underway. That strap gets undone when the big motor is cut off and I got forward.

 

It's a crappy solution, but it's the best I've come up with.

Post some pictures of the deck and storage. There is always a way to modify. But it’s not always cheap.

The only other thing I can think of is to mount rod holders on your console and store them vertical like center console boats do.  

My 16" Lund Fury XL Sport has a rod locker for six rods up to 8 foot long. It's more of a multi species boat style though. We have rod holders to hold some rods vertical or at a 45 degree slant when out on the water. Works well for us.

I used to have a Nitro 640 (16'). I did exactly what @Way2slow suggested. I pulled out the plate where the T/M connected and the front trim switch location. I used zip ties and moved all the wiring out of the way. At that time, the only rod socks available were nylon from BPS, but they worked ok. It worked pretty well.