Now is the time to make some Redneck Fishing Rod Holders

Do you ever go fishing and your arms get tired of holding your fishing pole as you are pulling  in fish after fish after fish?  I know that I do.  If this sounds like you, then perhaps you need a fishing rod holder so that you can rest more often.  They work great for cat fishing or any other type of fishing where you simply bait the hook, toss it into the water and wait for the fish to strike.  Lots of guys even use these at the beach for surf fishing.  And they are easy to make.  Can you use a screwdriver to tighten a screw?  If you can, then you can make these.  All by yourself.  Maybe even without adult supervision.

OK, first you need some steel rebar, sucker rod or some other type of long and strong material that you can pound into the ground as a stake.  It needs to be really strong because fish are going to be yanking on it and it cannot bend. At least you hope that fish are going to be yanking on it.  And it needs to be three or four or 5 feet long, depending on how high above ground you desire your rod holder to sit.

Next you need some PVC pipe, just large enough so that the bottom end of your fishing rod will fit into it.  As in some other things in life, a tight fit is not absolutely essential but the tighter you can get it, the better off you will like it.  And it doesn't matter a whole lot how long it is, 6 inches might be adequate, eight or 10 would be better and 12 inches might be the ideal.  Kind of like the fit, an inch or two more or less is not going to kill the deal.

Then you need a couple of hose clamps big enough to fit around the PVC pipe.

All you do is place the PVC pipe at one end of your stake, put a clamp around the top of it, one around the bottom of it, and tighten. 

Here is another view that shows more of the steel rod.  It is now ready to install.  The steel rods that we use are probably 5 feet long or so.  The ground where we usually fish is full of smaller rocks and to get a good solid hold we drive the steel rod into the ground two or 3 feet.  Any less than that and it is wobbly.

Simply insert and begin pounding.  Pound on your stake hard, driving it into the ground or whatever else you desire to drive it into.

Bait your line, toss it into the water and set the drag, insert your rod in the PVC pipe and you're done.  Drink beer.  Read a book. Play tiddlywinks.  Play scrabble.  Play with something else or look on Ebay until something starts jerking.  You know what to do then.  If you don't, then you need to give up  fishing right now.

These will not work well with pistol grip fishing rods.  You need the type of rods that are straight all the way down.  And they will not pull out of the PVC pipe.  Even if they are a loose fit, we have never had a fish pull one out of the holder.

                                                         Here are four of them in action.


OK.  Now that we know how to make them, perhaps we could take those same principles and apply them to the fishing boat that we had just built.  Mightn't we?

Of course we might.  So we did.  After all, is there any among us that desires to go fishing and wants to go to the trouble of holding the fishing rod the entire time?  I thought not.  That is simply too much work. Fishing is difficult enough all by itself, who wants to invite even more stress into their life.  Who needs that?

This rod holder is mounted directly in front of the rear seat.  Simply drill a hole through one side of the PVC pipe big enough for the head of a screw to fit through.  Put your screw through the hole, drive the screw through the other side of the PVC pipe and into a solid object behind it.  In this case it is screwed directly into a two by two running up and down, serving as a support for the seat.

It has another hole drilled through one side of the top of the PVC pipe.  The screw was placed into the pipe and screwed through the other side of the pipe directly into the one by two running along the top edge of the boat.  It is a solid and secure mount, unlike Pam Anderson it does not wiggle or jiggle and I have little fear that even the mightiest perch or crappie will pull it loose.  We put two of these at the rear of the boat and two more at the front.  And we were done.

But wait.

Now seemed as good a time as any to answer one of mankind's oldest problems,  a question that has been keeping me awake at night.  Just how big of a fish would we be able to fit into the compartment of our little craft?

At this exact moment, I happen to be in the same sort of situation that some of you may find yourself in.  I am in possession of exactly zero giant fish.  How might I go about finding the answer without a giant fish?

Was this an insurmountable problem?  Or was there some other way of finding out, some other scientific method of discovering what it was I wished to know?

I thunk about it and as I looked around I thought that perhaps there was a way.  If only I had a test subject.

And I did.  Lo and behold, there was one right in front of me.

This is the 10 year old test subject.  He seems to be of average height and weight, moderately healthy and athletic, emits no offensive body odors at the moment and his heart and lungs seem to be functioning. He posesses all the qualities of a fine test subject. He is standing in the middle of the compartment in question.

Will he be able to pull it off?  Can he do it?  Or is this simply too much to ask of a modern child, brought up                                                     on gummy bears and game boys?

The test subject proved to be remarkably successful, fitting into the compartment in less than 9 seconds.  The lid fully closed with him inside.

Hooray!  The experiment worked.  But wait.  Again.  What does this tell us?  Exactly?

Well, it tells us that the 10 year old 76 pound Guinea pig will fit into the compartment.  And although the photos do not reveal it,  it also tells us that the test subject does not like to be in a hot, closed compartment as his sister sits on top of the lid.  Other than that, I cannot say for sure as I am unaware of a current chart that compares the weight of children to the equivocal weight of catfish, taking into account things such as skeletal structure, mental condition, maturity, and percentage of body mass due solely to the ingestion of Reese's pieces.