As slick as GLASS

After following The Fiberglass Manifesto for over a year now. Seeing how hard Cam works to get people to try fly fishing with a fiberglass rod, it became apparent that the glass revolution is growing by leaps and bounds and I might be missing something cool. Not being able to hold out any longer, I was able to order two white fiberglass blanks from Kabuto Rods in Japan. Yasuyuki Kabuto is considered by many to be one of the premier glass rod builders around today, so when the opportunity to get a few of these hand crafted blanks came up I pounced on it.

After looking at pictures of rods that other custom builders have done with these blanks, I have decided on taking a classic glass blank and making it a little more modern. It's just what I do.
I will probably not use the traditional cork western grip and instead put a carbon fiber wrapped foam grip on it instead.

In lieu of the traditional snake guides, I am leaning towards putting on Black Pearl Recoil guides.

The hardest decision for me has to do with the reel seat. It has to be spot on to make the whole build come together. I am leaning towards a blued nickel Struble reel seat and just need to decide on what the spacer will look like.

The good thing is i'll have plenty of time to decide since the blanks won't ship until late August.
Can't wait to get these in and get started so I can see what glass is all about.

Fly Rod 002

Started building a new fly rod a few weeks ago and put the final touches to it yesterday. It's a 9ft, 4wt, 4pc built on a TFO Professional series blank. The guides are wrapped in orange with gray trim rings. Won't get to use this one since I built it for someone else. Matched the rod with a Konic 1.5 reel.

After following The Fiberglass Manifesto for the past six months reading up on the growing popularity of glass fly rods, i've decided to build a 3wt out of glass. I have been in contact with Mike McFarland who is a custom builder as well as a custom blank maker. He is going to be making me a glass blank which I will make into a nice stream rod. Can't wait to get started on it