Fishing Rod Parts

“You get a line and I’ll get a pole, honey” sings an old southern song about fishing for crawdads. Apparently, fishing rods were pretty simple affairs at the time of this song’s heyday in the 19th century. Fishing rods have gotten a lot more complex since, and today’s fishing rod parts consequently include many more components than just a line and a pole. There is the rod itself, the guides, the reel seat, and the handle, for starters.

Then as now, the rod is the most fundamental of the fishing rod parts. All other fishing rod parts attach to it and work in conjunction with it. The majority of today’s rods are composed of graphite. A derivative of carbon, graphite is popular on account of its being one of the softest minerals on earth and having one of the best ratios of strength to weight. Fiberglass is also sometimes used for building fishing rods.

Rods vary greatly in length: They can be as short as 5 feet or as long as 15. A 15-foot-long rod may sound like a very cumbersome object to lug around. But many rods work around this by being segmented into two, three, or four parts that you attach together when you are ready to fish, and then snap apart and stow away into their storage container when you’re done.

You don’t sacrifice much rod strength to have rod segments. Metal ferrules hold the segments together with enough firmness that the rod will hold steady even if a very strong fish is tugging the line.

Along the rod goes a row of guides. These pieces, made of ceramic or metal, are what you thread the line through one its way from the reel to the rod’s tip. Guides’ placement and sizes will vary depending on the individual rod’s style and length.

A reel seat, situated above the base, attaches the reel to the rod. There are three standard types of reel seats: fly, spinning, and casting. You’ll use a different one of the three depending on the type of reel.

Finally, you have the handle, which is what you hold onto when you are fishing with the rod. The handle will take a differing form depending on the kind of rod. Spinning rods and fly rods have thin, streamlined handles, whereas a casting rod’s handle is bulkier. Foam and cork are the two ingredients most commonly chosen to make handles.

Posted July 6th, 2010 in Fishing Rods, Shopping.

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Fishing Rod Parts

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