TackleTour

This ^^^^

Yeah.

I broke the handle on a Tatula flipping rod a few years back via truck door. I used some metal threaded rod and epoxy to repair it. The added weight made the rod float in my hand and was effortless to pitch. Seemed to make the rod more sensitive.

I have used chair covers and quarters on different rods. It does balance the combo but, not sure how it affects sensitivity. I thought it negatively affected it but, I could be making things up too.

I forgot to add. I am building a flipping rod and was playing with tungsten weights in the butt cap of the rod. I accidentally got a weight stick in the rear grip. It does feel nice and such but, unless I do surgery to the rear grip...it aint coming out. Luckily if feels really nice with it in there.

I'm not to sensitive tip heavy rods, but I had 2 rods that really sucked. Try adding chair covers and washers in them, worked out pretty good, until I found a better solution. Sold them.

Im pretty anal when it comes to balancing a rod, as most of my rods are around the 7ft5 mark give or take an inch or two...The ones that dont balance well, i have a rubber chair cap with quarter or two....only do this with rods that are for tip up techniques....i have stripped a couple 894nrxs split grips and made them into a full grip with 1.5oz tungsten sticks in the butt section for great balance....and yea i know i killed the warranty, but not to worried about it..... never have broke a nrx

I have mostly custom rods, and almost every one of them were built with a weighted counter-balance butt. It does seem to make the rod more sensitive, if the rod wants to tip up slightly. I have always supposed that this is due to the fish pulling downward when the tip wants to rise. I do know for a fact that my wrist, elbow and shoulder hurt less at the end of a long day if the rod is balanced.

I flatten half and one ounce bell sinkers or egg sinkers and add them to the rod butt. It adds weight but balance is better.

Yup, 894C, used the balancer from Mud Hole, as much as I hate adding weight to a rod, the 894 feels much better.

TommyG wrote:Yup, 894C, used the balancer from Mud Hole, as much as I hate adding weight to a rod, the 894 feels much better.

Same rod same deal. Much better feeling than without the balancer.
Dom

Another mudhole balancer user on the 893 and 894 - however I trimmed them down so they are the same length as the butt cork, so the don't hang over... I also tried one on my 916UBR, but it just made the rod too heavy, so I took it off. To me you can get to a point where adding too much weight defeats the purpose making the rod too heavy overall.

I use the little 1" furniture caps you can get from HD or Lowes on my 853/854 rods as well.

That's the one thing that really annoyed me when I moved from Dobyns to the NRX's - the NRX balance horribly.

I use the chair leg protectors with some quarters in them on my 894's. far better and listen to what I'm going to tell you-------- got really bad tennis elbow one year after a week casting hard in Florida. Took a long time to recover. I find balanced rods reduce the stress on your forearm. I use a tennis elbow support brace now as well. And I'm in good shape not a couch person

I add chair tip rubber covers to the rod's butt section that I use for 'tip up" applications such as worming, jigging, etc...for horizontal moving baits, where I retrieve with tip level or down, it is not necessary to have that perfect balance.

In the past with cheap rods. The stuff I have now is balance from the get go.

Those of you using the Mudhole balancer, I'm assuming you're using the removable one rather than the permanent model?

Reverendo wrote:Those of you using the Mudhole balancer, I'm assuming you're using the removable one rather than the permanent model?

Yes