I wanted to have the best possible conventional rod for live bait fishing for striped bass, sparing no expense. I talked to Scott Leonard and we drew up some plans for such a rod. It is built on a Lamiglas #1081M blank. Special components chosen were Fuji silicon carbide guides, green pigmented composition cork, green Fuji reel seat, green butt cap and green, silver and black wraps.

Here is the start of the process, reaming out the corks and setting them on the blank.

If you are interested in purchasing a custom rod like this or any other rod you can contact Scott at augiesbassrods@gmail.com.

Also coming soon will be a special selection of inshore custom rods, the "Captain Al Lorenzetti Signature Series". It will include two models in three different sets. 8 foot medium or light live bait, 8.5 foot medium or light plugging and 7 foot medium or light ocean fluke rods.

Next step is to glue and clamp the butt section of the rod.

The reel seat and foregrip are then positioned, glued and clamped.

This is the result of construction. Of course the reel seat is positioned correctly with respect to the spline in the rod before gluing.

The rod is then spun at high speed on an arbor and sanded to the dimensions that I wanted. The rod must feel comfortable for my grip and hand size and so we made a couple of adjustments until it felt just right.

Here is the rod after sanding.

Next process was to set the guides correctly spacing them so that the line was supported evenly along the length of the blank when fully flexed and not touching the blank at any place. Once the guide placement was determined then Scott began doing base wraps in green with silver trim rings.

The guides were attached with black overwrap.

Next major step is doing the butt wrap. It is time consuming and a real art but it makes the rod look beautiful.

This is the finished butt wrap.