My first rod building venture and I am looking for some ideas and thoughts. I have been looking at buying a dapping rpd for a while but found most of the ones on the market (not many) a bit over gunned for the wee brownies in Sutherland that I usually fish for.
To this end I have purchased a Carp pole from Aldi for the pricley sum of ?9.99. It is 8m long, but if you lose the first two thick sections you end up with a 15ft, completely black, very light, "vitrofibre" (whatever that is) telscopic blank that has a lovely fine tip. I have started whipping eyes and am looking at ideas for the reel seat. Any thoughts about this as I am sure somebody else will have gone down this route.
Calum
I had an old spinning rod I built years ago with a skeleton reel seat - think sea anglers used them on beachcaster blanks. The that worked brilliantly on the pole I got from Lidle in May and the pole works beautifully as a dapping rod. Fits onto the side of a shakey tube too.
Vitro fibre is the carrot stuff - very slow actioned. A magazine offered cheap vitro fibre rods recently and I brought along a couple to the casting club. They roll cast better than top of the range Orvis and they cost about a tenner!
Thanks for the ideas, have now looked through the collection of old rods and found a Fuji reel seat on an old Shakespear sea rod that will probably do the trick. The tight old git part of my nature quite likes the idea of ending up with a usuable dapping rod for less than ?15. The action Malcolm as you have said is slow, however as its designed for "all UK fisheries and can handle carp and Silver fish" it will probably handle the best that Sutherland can throw at it. I,ve just realised that it will be at least six months till I can try it out, unless anybody has caight a grayling on a dapped fly.