Building The Rodfather Redfish [drc #14 & #15 9ft 9wt 4pc fast] 14Jan22-19Feb22-03Mar22

In rapt anticipation of early April in Texas, I designed and built another rod; this is drc #14, the Rodfather Redfish. It's a potent 9' 8wt 4pc based on a powerful IM12 Japanese Toray fiber graphite blank. I built a custom "arrowhead with diamond in a box" handle with 1.5" fixed fighting butt for this rod. The fighting butt need is obvious but the arrowheads (I've never seen one on a handle) are indicative of the needed quickness and distance of casts for tailing redfish... shoot like an arrow. I also selected a salt-impervious aluminum & woven graphite uplocking reel seat in titanium coloring and matched that with true salt impervious, ultra-light, titanium guides (eeesh $$$). I employed oversized guides, including 2 stripping guides, to match the quick & powerful casting needed on the bay when using fat casting heads of an 8-9 weight (225-260 grain) SA Amplitude Smooth Redfish Cold floating line. I wrapped out the matte brown rod in sea blue and mated it to a Piscifun Aoka XS 7/8 reel, also in sea blue. The Aoka XS is not expensive but does have a sealed drag system needed for salt water; I chose it as my experience with other Piscifun reels has been solid and it was fairly inexpensive (as the spool is cast aluminum, not machined, as the reel body is) and light (5 oz) for it's size. I know we'll have spectacular Scott Sector rods on the guide boats, and I'll sure try them, but how much cooler will it be to wield my own weapon. It measures out at an strong ERN of 9.9-10 and AA of 68°, so it's a truer fast 9 wt, yet sports just a light 4.65 oz rod weight. The RFRF balances well as a system and I can cast "miles" with it at the park doing recasts and single and double haul casts quickly. I hope the Amplitude floating line picks up as quickly on the bay as it does on snow.

I'll show the build out in chronological sequence. First to arrive were all the "hardware" parts.

And the first task was to build the custom handles. My idea required the normal amount of jigsawing, reassembly, and then turning. The fighting butt end piece is a solid chunk of rubberized cork for sturdiness; I usually make them this way. I had to change blades on my inset cutter to cut the end of the handle for the fixed hood of this slightly larger (.85" diameter) reel seat hood than typical for me. The resultant full wells arrowhead & diamond handles are pretty keen... shoot the fat, fast and far.

I did craft another handle using basically the same idea but as a "negative" of the original - the 2nd one has light arrows and light boxed diamond)... a brother to the original. I call it the Brother Haine handle.

When the blanks came in (they actually took 5-6 weeks to arrive - slow boat and supply chain issues from Asia I guess) I was able to mark the splines, mark distances for guides, and assemble the butt section with arrowhead handle, reel seat, and fixed fighting butt. I was a smidge concerned as the plastic bag they arrived in was marked 5 weight 8#. Measuring thankfully indicated the 8-9 weight as needed. As I wanted to extend the butt section blank piece through the reel seat end and into the fighting butt, I had to drill a hole in the provided end cap of the reel seat. This allowed me to retain a much more finished look at the fighting butt than if I just slammed the cork up against the screw barrel.

I decided to use a smidge larger colorfast nylon for this bigger rod, expecting a bit more stress on the guides. I chose Pro Wrap size D color-fast nylon (in teal & sunset). Working with this larger thread is much easier to handle during wrapping but really soaks up the epoxy. They both are stunning IMO. Here is Rob's sunset wrapping...

For mine I used sea blue teal but did the middle ferule mixed with sunset in deference to it's brother rod. The RFRF rods have two stripping guides and big titanium snakes for salt water and big shots.

The dead-on matching reel, 85 yds of 30# backing line and SA fly line arrived and I spun the backing and line onto the reel in normal fashion. I will wait to have our guides add leader & tippet setup for Operation Cobra Kai; heck, it's included so why not. The reel & line weigh in at 6.6 ozs.

Measuring the RFRF shows it's a very strong 8wt with an ERN of 9.9-10 (so really a 9wt - and therefore a better line is WF9F) and it is righteously fast with a AA of 68°, despite being just intermediate modulus Toray graphite IM12. Total rod weight is just 4.65oz built out. Balance & mating with the Aoka XS with WF8F is fine.