Rod Maintenance Tip: How to Avoid Broken Ferrules

If only I had tightened my ferrules...

This past weekend I spent two whole days chucking heavy streamers on a seven-weight with a sink-tip line. My boat mate and I traded off the same rod—cast after cast and fish after fish without ever doing one very easy thing that would have saved my rod from the fate above.

Simply checking the tightness of your ferrules when fishing heavy bugs or lines once every dozen casts or so will ensure that the individual pieces of your rod do not slip to the ends. A rod break like this usually comes when you set the line on a fish or heave that last hero cast into the wind—thus exerting to much pressure on the side walls of the graphite. This blows out the very bottom of the female end of the ferrule like the one above with an audible pop.

This was the third rod that has broken this way on me in a year and I think I’ve finally learned my lesson.  Tighten, tighten, tighten your rod when consistently throwing heavy flies or lines throughout the day.  Another piece of advice for this problem is to actually use the ferrule wax that many rod manufactures give you when you buy a rod. This is a lot like candle wax or bee’s wax and fills the tiny gaps in-between the female and male pieces of the rod.

Lesson finally learned. Don’t let it happen to you…