Today I was at an antique store here in Iowa city down town, and I saw a True temper fiberglass rod. It is a 6 wt 2 pcs rod that needs new guides and tip guide. The real seat seems to be ok as well as the metal ferrules. The shop ask for $25. I may buy it and put new guides and use it to fish for bass and blueguill in the ponds around home.
I wonder if someone knows about this brand of rods. I don’t own any fiberglass rod, and this would be the first one. What should I expect for the rod performance? Any comment or advise will be very wellcome!!!
Seeing that no one else has anything to say, I’ll chime in with some uneducated comments.
Being from a mid-west manufacturer, True Tempers are just not found here in the east
Since the rod is rated with the aftma rating of being a 6wt, that places it as being made after 1961… at least.
The metal ferrules place in in the early to mid ‘60s
A glass fly rod should have approximately one guide per every foot in the rod’s lenght (8 guides for an 8’ rod), lesser quality glass rods often had less guides than they should have had
I would say that a good quality rod in poor condition might be worth $25-$45
For a lesser quality rod, $25 might be a lot.
That’s an uneducated opinion, for expert advice you should ask here;
Thanks for the comments about the rod. I finaly got the rod. It is my summer project now. The rod measures 8’3", which means that have lost some 3"… The tip section is the shorter one. Other than that, the overall condition of the blank is fair to good. It seems that the rod was used quite a bit. A closer inspection resulted in a lose grip that easily came out. I will replace the cork grip and reel seat (for another plastic/aluminium one) in addition to the guides. And yes, I’ll put more and bigger guides. The few guides that still had were really of small diameter. The striping guide was really small. It will not be a funcy rod rather a bass rod for the ponds around home. Something that I can keep in the car with some bass flies and ready to go.
Here are some pics of the rods. This is the “before condition”
I hope to post some pic soon of the “after condition”
For your $25, you could have picked up a new blank of reasonable quality, add about $30 for guides and reel seat/handle and you would have had a decent but not great user rod. Your True Temper may also get you there, but maybe not since the tip section may have been broken in the past and the mechanics messed up. What the heck, you will have fun rebuilding it Allyn
Your mention of True Temper reminded me of one of my first fly rods. I still have it. It is a True Temper 3003, 8 1/2 ft. Made in the USA. It also says Custom Built Three Thousand. I have always liked the rod, if anything, for the color of it. It is steel gray, with baby blue monofilament wrappings with chrome mylar like stuff under the wrappings. The ferrules are aluminum with an O ring. I wonder how good it is suppose to be?
Flyboy,
I hope to tell you soon how I like mine. I bought the guides and grip a month ago and it seems that I have lost the guides… wierd the grip is already glued but I can’t find the guides… I will have to buy a new set…
I’ve never owned a True Temper rod but I’m familiar with the brand. My guess is it’s a middle of the road quality rod, sort of like Horrocks-Ibbotson. Anything can happen with your rebuild. It may turn out to be a gem. In any case, it’s a good project rod. I look forward to seeing your finished results.
My dad has a TruTemper 8wt. I bought a reel and cheap BSPro line for it and it casts really smooth. I’d call it a slow action. Would be great for Bass/Panfish poppers.
Thanks for the feedback, I also hope that the project come out nice for bass fishing. After all this was the original plan, to have a slow action rod good for bulky flies.
I’m in the process of wraping the guides (I found them after searching the whole appartment for a couple of days)
I’ll post some pics when I get it done.
Well finally it happens!
I wraped the guides (10 in place of the 6 originals), glued the cork grip and whenI thought that it was ready, the reel seat gave up. I broke the one of the aluminium rings that hold the reel foot. Soooo, I went for a cheap reel seat and replaced it. The little problem was that the grip was already glued… So I worked my way out with a small saw to take off the old real seat (plastic body and aluminium rings) and I found that the rod was about 1 inch shorter (the reel seat was full plastic in the last inch! ). I I have to cut about an inch of the cork grip in order to have some room where I can glue the new seat… and here is the result.
There are some old guide marks that I covered with epoxy. The new guides did not coincide with the old guide locations. The rod had 6 guides originally and I put 10 now. So I can shoot a bit more line. The rod is 8’2" now (I lost 1" when I change the real seat…)
But I catch bass with it as I have expected!!!
The first one
Very nice work! It looks like it will be a fun rod to fish. I went back to your earlier post to look at the “before” pics, but the links don’t seem to work.
I like this. Years ago I fished several True Temper baitcasting and spinning rods. In fact, I think I have one in the garage. Hmmm. I would have done as you have done, that is to have bought the old beast and given it new life. Methinks there is something special about that versus buying something new.
This is exactly what I enjoy most! give a new life to something that have had a life long ago… The True temper is a bit heavier for casting the whole day long. But it’s so sweet to cast deer hair bugs!! And by the way I fish for bass with it during the last 2 hours of light of the day. So there is no so long casting sessions.
