How many rods have you broken?

Scudley Do Right

Scudley Do Right

Legend
All the warranty talk had me thinking, how many rods do people break? I am 40 and fish quite a bit and have only broken 3 rods but one I don't count. One fly rod when I dropped it half out of the rod tube. It was a TFO and I told them it was my fault. They didn't care and gave me a new tip for the minimum charge. My dad's dog jumped on a spinning rod in my back seat. The last was a buddy's rod on his boat. He wanted me to get it out of the downrigger but it wouldn't unclip. He told me to really reef on it and it snapped in half. Turns out the dodger was fouled on the ball. How many rods are people breaking? I don't baby them but I also don't toss them in the back of the truck like a shovel?
 
1 in a truck door. That is for over 50 years of flyfishing.
 
Ten over the years that I can think of. Several of those were gear rods.
SF
 
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Only two. The tip section of 1 fly rod while reeling in a pink salmon, all my fault. The other was the tip of 1 spinning rod by rolling up my back window with the rod tip just barely sticking out.
 
Broke my Sage LL 486 twice and Sage fixed it quickly for $30 both times. Last time was years ago, though, pre-Farbank.
 
6 that I recall but most were crap so no loss and broken by fish,car door or my stupidity. My mom broke the first good rod that I had saved up for when a kid, a Bob Church boron loch rod. She put it in the trunk, closed it and crunch, the bottom male ferrule was toast, I might have cried… I was able to get it fixed but that one hurt bad though I couldn’t say a thing.

Dave
 
Quite a few, now that I think about it. Dang, maybe a dozen fly rods over 33 years of fly fishing.
 
Three. One when a friend decided to drive crazy style, causing the cooler to pummel my Fenwick. Another gear rod dragging a coho through the seaweed and a beach rod victimized by an errant set of barbell eyes. Never bothered trying to return them..
 
The one I am sending in is rod number 3 in my lifetime I have busted.
 
3.
One while bushwhacking and 2 that got clouserized. Stiff wind, dumbbell eyes and shitty casting is a recipe for disaster. Kind of surprised I haven’t broken more.
 
a few....almost all trout rods (although I fell on one of my 8wts while steelheading and broke it--lucky it wasn't park of me that broke). I've broken several euro rods at that last little bit prior to landing larger fish (practicing my "Orvis rod bend" technique). Plus I broke one doing stupid things like trying to get a fly out of a tree by whipping the rod back and forth...Oh, I also blew up a rod while fighting a steelhead...I don't ever recall hitting the rod ever prior to that and it wasn't too severe of an angle nor was the fish pulling all that hard. That's the only one that I'm a little dubious about it being my fault, but who knows...
 
3 - 1st two were bamboo, I was 10 when #1 occurred after I hooked a big Brown while I was in a tree above its protected lie.

#2 was broken a year later as I trudged along toward "the crick" while wearing hand-me-down hippers that were two sizes too big. A fella had helped his wheelchair-bound bride into a their Henry J Kaiser as I approached along the sidewalk. The rod tip was next to the passenger car door which wasn't shut tightly as the guy pulled-out. The car pulled forward, the door opened and then slammed shut, capturing the rod tip. A scrawny 11 year old in ginormous hip boots can neither yell loud enough nor run fast enough to avert tragedy in such a situation. Dad fixed both rod tips (although I'm not quite sure he believed the second tale of woe.)

#3 was an 6 weight Axiom that snapped as I tried to turn a by-catch carp. TFO honored their warranty in fine fashion following the Axiom mishap.
 
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Orvis power matrix 3– my first rod, I fished it a lot and broke it 2 or 3 times before Orvis replaced it with a Trident. The PM3 had a nest action but was “brittle.”
St Croix 6 wt—left on truck in sections after finishing a float in the dark and not having my rod case at the take out. We pulled off and it fell on the road and another car ran over the butt section.
Sage 10 wt—deckhand put it together. I was casting and the middle ferrrule slipped, crack. Nobody else needs to assemble my rods.
Sage 12 wt- casting from the bow of a tuna boat, middle ferrule slipped and crack. I need to make sure the ferrules are tight.
CT 2 wt- was assembled in the car, going fishing, rod tip went out an open back window and I power rolled the window up as I hit the freeway, snap.
TFO 6 weight—tiller handle on motor shifted during boat retrieval, rod still in boat, crack
TFO 8 wt—thought the rod bag was empty but the tip section was still in it and I did something dumb to break it.
TFO 8 wt—snake guide half ripped off bushwhacking
Cabelas 12 wt—rushed a tuna to the gaff, wrong lifting technique

So maybe not a dozen, but 11 separate incidents.
Cuidado, amigos.
 
I can think of 6 off the top of my head.

TFO BVK 5wt and 6wt. Set on top of car after taking out of one lake with the plan to drive to another lake to continue fishing. Watched them bounce down Cascade Lakes Highway in the side view mirror.

Sage RPL 5wt. Snagged on the umpteenth tree in a lake full of dead trees. Channeled a little frustration trying to get it unsnagged, broke the tip.

Beulah Guide 5 wt. Hooked a decent trout, was playing it, broke about a 3rd of the way down from the tip. I must have tinged it before, wasn't putting a lot of pressure on it.

Two 12 wts tuna fishing. One definitely my fault with poor technique when the fish dove under the boat, other was a back up I'd bought used for $100, broke on the first fish I caught with it -still likely my fault.
 
1 rod plus one reel in 16 years. The rod was a 6 weight rainshadow blank that I built, the ferrule came loose a bit and I didn't notice and a double haul cracked the male end of the ferrule and the graphite started to banana peel down the blank.

The reel was an old hardy lightweight clone branded as Browning. I dropped it while packing up. It landed on the foot and snapped one side of the foot off.
 
tips on two euro rods, and hit the tip of my 7wt Instigator with a large bead head streamer on a windy day, which snapped on the next cast...
 
I don’t count the number, but remember climbing into my boat when I slipped and landed on my Meiser 7 weight. That didn’t go well and I broke one of the middle sections. Sent it in and they wrapped a new one because it is a custom rod. I love the Echo rod warranty and have used it several times.
 
3 in almost 30 years all in the last couple years. One Redington Link that lost a battle with a coho and the lower unit on my outboard. The Vice that replaced the link snapped at a ferrule mid cast, and I stepped on my buddies fly rod in the boat and shattered the tip.
 
Eastside said:
I don’t count the number, but remember climbing into my boat when I slipped and landed on my Meiser 7 weight. That didn’t go well and I broke one of the middle sections. Sent it in and they wrapped a new one because it is a custom rod. I love the Echo rod warranty and have used it several times.
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This reminds me of the time three of us were crowding into my 14' Hewescraft at a muddy launch. My friend Randy sort of stumbled and knelt onto my 8 weight Sage. Crunch.

I've broken perhaps a half dozen rods; I forget. A brand new ----- 5100 came with a broken tip, right out of the tube: not my fault. The others were my fault. Dapping a fly into tules for a carp and not reacting quick enough to the eat to get the rod tip out of the reeds: Snap. A big bead head hitting the tip of a rod; tick - broken.
 
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