November 15, 2023
By Game & Fish Staff
Building your own fishing rod is not only possible, but you can construct one that can be every bit as high in quality as a store-bought version.
Game & Fish Editorial Director Adam Heggenstaller got a hands-on taste of how easy it can be during a visit to the Mud Hole Custom Workshop in Florida, where rod-building experts Chris Adams of Mud Hole and bass pro Terry "Big Show" Scroggins showed him the way.
In the above video, Heggenstaller goes step by step—from rod blank to finished rod—to learn the process and build his own seven-foot spinning rod he later used to catch a mess of bass. Mud Hole has all the components, tools and instruction you need to build your own.
Heggenstaller selected his own components, then followed Mud Hole’s process to build a stellar rod. "Shoot boys, we built a rod," he says in the video after finishing his rod.
They next day, they hit the water.
"Every component on this rod I picked, I put together, and now I cannot wait to go see how it performs," Heggenstaller says. "What a cool deal that was. I built this rod at Mud Hole yesterday, came out here this morning, caught a bunch of bass fishing a trick worm on this spinning rod, a seven-foot SJ842.
"And the really neat thing is you can do the exact same thing, thanks to Mud Hole. They have all the components that you need and all the instruction that you need to build your very own custom rod."
Find more info and videos on rod-building on Mud Hole’s YouTube channel.
