Updating The Euro Nymphing Weapon With Custom Fighting Butt 03Jul20

I was pretty unsatisfied with the unbalanced nature of the drc #2 as originally finished - especially for a tight line nymphing rod I needed great balance in my hand to avoid fatigue and to best sense strikes. The tip-heavy nature was pretty bad in these regards so I set out to perfectly balance the rod. To do so best I thought required a fighting butt, perhaps weighted even, to offset the long & heavy rod weight. I built a fully customized fighting butt to match the grip. It's gotta be one of the only 4 wt rods ever to have a full fighting butt.

I started with no feint heart and drilled directly into the butt cap of the reel seat with a pilot hole. The cap was a domed piece so the key was finding the center and assuring the drill bit would not wander. The clever (IMO) scheme for finding the center of the round and domed surface was to grip the rod perfectly vertically and then put some marking wax on sheet of glass and then hold the glass (a plane) against the domed surface perpendicular to the rod in all directions. The mark left by the wax on the dome was its center. I then used a sharp punch to guide the drill bit. I first drilled a pilot hole and then drilled a larger hole and then tapped the hole for a 1/4" coarse screw bolt about 4" long. Before screwing in the bolt I dumped epoxy into the hole in the reel seat. I then screwed in the bolt assuring it was true to the rod, let the epoxy cure and then cut off the head with a Dremmel tool. This entire process requires mostly brazen confidence that you are doing the right thing.

To create a custom fighting butt I wanted a rubberized end for when I set the rod down or poked it into my tummy; I bought a blueish impregnated cap to match the blue wave of the lower half of my grip. I also replicated the "arrow" design of my upper handle. But before doing final building, I dry fit all the cork rings and the rubberized end piece onto the 1/4" screw sticking out of the reel seat. I then loaded the full rod with reel and line and checked balance outside. I needed more weight behind the fulcrum (basically the index finger of my right/casting hand at the top of the grip) and added tungsten putty to the end until I achieved great balance. I then drilled out the end cap and the first (narrow) cork ring and epoxied in the proper amount of tungsten putty. It actually took a lot of weight and the rod is heavy, but most importantly, properly balanced.

Here are the fighting butt's cork rings glued on the mandrel and then the whole thing again in the grip clamp with the end cap glued in place.

After a day, all was very dry and I mounted the fighting butt assembly onto my Rube Goldberg fighting butt extension screw with epoxy. I did need to Dremmel an indention in the top of the butt to match the domed shaped of the reel seat cap. I also masked off the seat so I wouldn't mess it up with epoxy. I had to devise a way to turn the fighting butt into the right shape and while I built a jig for this purpose, I ultimately preferred to just mount the raw butt to the rod and jigger the rod lathe to turn the butt while directly on the rod. It worked.

For the moment of truth I took to the yard and strung the revised rod, drc #2.1, up for testing. Beautiful. Much easier to "cast," hold, and fight. It is heavier than anything else I own at 6 1/8 oz but I don't really notice that in brief experience... the balance is much more important.

 

Fortunately my custom rod case and rod sleeve still fit well. I am very happy now and can't wait to hit the Taylor or Frying Pan or even the PT for some close-in work - like twelve feet away. :)

UPDATING THE UPDATE... I was unsatisfied with the reuse of an old reel and inappropriate line for Euro nymphing where "thin to win" is what's really needed. I needed to dedicate a reel setup for the specific task. So, I tried a ~$45 MaxCatch Toro 3/4 reel from China - matching cobalt coloring and amazing machined build quality & drag for the price... proof will be in the field but out of the box its awesome. My new rig is still perfectly balanced.

I also custom built a nymphing line with 20# backup then a thin level euro nymphing specific Mastery line from SA, specific 12' 2X leader from Rio and then  tri-color indicator 4X mono from Rio. I cut down the leader's butt section by 4' and added a loop to the fly line & leader and used loop-to-loop there. I cut off and reserved the tippet ring and added ~4' of tri-color mono to the 2X leader end with a surgeon's knot - I left the tag ends live so I can see exactly how deep my bugs are (I won't dip these tags into the water). I then reattached the ring to the end of the 4X tri-color mono. I then attached ~4' of 5X fluorocarbon tippet to the ring. So, I have up to 8' of thin line I can put in the water and live tags and indicator mono (and leader end if needed) to help judge exactly how deep I am. Time to fish the new rig.