I’ve got a wild hair to build a new UL fly rod, but no budget to do anything too crazy. However, I do have an older 5’6" 2 pc UL (2-6 lb.) spinning blank that would be fun to build up into a fly rod. Anyone want to hazard a guess what line range that might fall into? I’m hoping for the 0 to 2 weight range. I have some components that I picked up on clearance, and can build this entire flyrod for less than $25. I think it is worth trying unless someone has done it and found it is a really bad idea.
Anyone built an UL spinning rod into a fly rod and have something to report? If not, I think that the clearance micro fly rod is going to start soon.
A few years ago I took my old 5’ solid glass spinning rod that I had since the late '50s and converted it to fly.
I liked the idea of fishing my first and oldest rod (and it seemed like a good idea at the time :roll:)
It had a nice cork grip/reel seat combo with sliding rings… all I had to do was change out the guides…
I think I used it once… not exactly a qualty blank.
The funny thing was tring to decide what size line to use. It worked okay with the first try, a WF5, but I tried it with every line I had, from a 3 to an 8, both WF and DT. Except for the 8 being clearly too heavy it was a toss-up which size was best
There’s a fellow that posts here once in a while, Lou something or other, that builds rods from fiberglass spin blanks. Real quality work. So don’t go by my bad experence.
I was just researching the opposite (fly blank for UL spinning), came across a post on rodbuilding.org (Closeout fly blanks as spinning- help) that contained three different versions for guess?timating the outcome:
i[/i] fly line weight (in grams) to lure size,
i[/i] fly rod rating to lure size (?sixteenths?), and
i[/i] fly rod rating to mono pound test
Shouldn?t be too complicated to work the logic in reverse (. . . i[/i] seems to make the most sense to me . . . )
?smc?
It all depends upon the action (flex curve) of the UL blank. Many 2-6lb spinning rod blanks make excellent low cost fly rods, I like the fast action designs for my casting style, others may prefer the slower full flex rod actions.
We have a very limited selection of lower cost fly rod blanks in the shorter lenght and light line wt sizes, the spinning rod blanks are fun to experiment with and please post your results.
It is very difficult to use a formula to convert spinning line wt in lbs to a fly rod line wt.,build the rod and test cast with 2wt or 3wt lines.
Regards,
FK