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Steeldrifter

Trout spey rods in progress

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These are taking a while because they are a pair of trout spey rods I'm building for myself and my fishing buddy Mark so I'm only able to work on them in shorts frames here & there between customer builds. Finally got the seats and grips done on them now at least. Applied 8 coats of clear urethane to the grips which really brings out all the fancy cork work colors nicely. Hope to have some time to wrap them next week perhaps.

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Beautiful work but how much do the urethane coats harden the grips? The softness of cork is what makes it such a great material for grips.

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It firms up the cork but doesn't make it overly hard feeling. I've done it before to one of my 10ft steelhead rods and it really gives a nice feel to it. You would think it would make the grip slippery when wet but it actually has just the opposite effect.

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Give it a test try sometime Dave on an old grip, you might change your mind. I say that because I always thought I would HATE it before I tried one. I use to see Bob Meiser do it on most his rods and I would think "jeez I wouldn't like that on one of my rods"... now after using the one on my steelhead rod for the past 5 yrs I like it and honestly never even give it a second thought as to it feeling any different in hand.

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Satin = BLAH lol ;)

 

Well gotta start looking for a reel. Thinking about maybe looking for a 10wt size reel and seeing if the 6/7wt size spey line will all fit on that size rather than going with a "spey specific" reel. Have to look and see what is out there that doesn't cost and arm & leg though. Bad enough I had to buy new wading boots and waders this spring...now a spey line and new reel...uhg.

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Steve,

 

Check out the Reddington Behemoths on YoTube. Red's had some super deals on them with a spare spool and backing a while back.

 

I really like mine.

 

Rocco

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Not familiar with those but I'll check that one out Dennis. I have an Echo Ion 10/12 that I bought a while back when I was going to build a big steelhead spey rod. I could use that for a while (kind'a big) just to get me by till I get a bit smaller reel. We'll see once I get the line I guess.

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Wow, if you consider a 6/7 a "trout spey" I need to fish where you do sometime.

 

I've built up a couple two handers with silver REC seats, they're beautiful! I built my rods intending to mount silver reels on them, but your handles have a lot of dark accents so maybe you intended on using black reels on them? Either way a reel in the 3 3/4 to 4 inch range, or 8/9/10 range should handle a 6/7 spey line just fine. A 6 weight I built with a REC seat is paired with a Hardy Marquis Salmon I. It looks great, holds lots of line, was relatively inexpensive, and sounds awesome when a bright summer steelhead dashes into my backing. Here's how my setup looks.

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The grain window of these blanks is quite large so it's actually more of a 5/6/7 by most standards. The places I really plan to use it a lot on the Au Sable are in faster water with large rocks so I'll be using some heavier heads to get some larger streamers down deep fast, so that's why I went higher on the rod wt. Not necessarily because of the fish size wink.png but more for the fly and grain weight than anything else.

 

Looking at the Ion 8wt reel right now. It has a 4" spool with 1.5" width which should be about right. My 10/12 Ion is 4.7" x 1.5 so pretty large. Probably end up selling the 10/12 and picking up a 4" 8wt ion.

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Fast, deep water, big flies, and heavy tips; I understand your rod choice. Sounds like the river near me that I swing streamers for bull trout on. A 6 weight spey is overkill for many of those trout, but it's what I like to use because of the big flies and heavy tips I use.

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