Storing all those fly rods

Wayne Kohan

Wayne Kohan

Life of the Party
So I’m rearranging my fly tying and storage room, where I keep the majority of my fly rods. I have somewhere around 20 fly rods of all varieties, many of which I wrapped myself from blanks, and so they do not have the factory rod tubes. So I have rods in marked tubes, unmarked tubes, and just sitting out. I have them just leaning against the wall. I don’t know what is in many of the tubes until I look in them, as I will use some of the tubes on different rods at times. While it is pleasant finding a rod I forgot I had, it is a bit frustrating and inefficient. Does anyone have a good system for rod storage. I’m sure many of you have more rods than I do. Thanks.
 
Also you can do a big inventory exercise once and document each and every rod in an excel spreadsheet. Then you can look in the file and see exactly what you have. I ended up doing that because I got to the point that I couldn’t keep a mental inventory anymore, especially for reels, extra spools and lines.

You could even label the bin # on the blueprint rack e.g. A1 thru D6 etc… and use that as a “find number” in the spreadsheet!
 
I use two of the tall laundry baskets in my closet. If they didn’t come with a tube, I just use a cardboard mailing tube with a label attached.
 
I've been using a basket arranged like blue print storage and it's worked well. I should probably move 1/2 of these along. But if I fish..........that's probably the rod I would have wanted. Got favorite rods for favorite places at this point.
 

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My most-used single hand fly rods rest in a vintage wooden horizontal rifle rack in my fish room, just in their socks. Some don't have tubes. For those that do, their tubes lean against the wall, between a shelf and a desk, which is also where my few double hand rods lean.
My few old cane rods rest in another horizontal rack that someone made for neck ties; found in a thrift shop.
 
Six or seven years ago I looked in my closet at all the rods (no excel spreadsheet @Merle - but that idea has merit) and had forgotten about a few of them. Hauled them out to inventory them and decided it was time to downsize. I sold several and donated a half dozen to PHW. Since that time, I've purchased a 12 weight (used once but will get used next year). I don't see me adding many to the quiver and what I have are in zippered rod carrying cases or in an old wood 24-pack beer case.

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I have one bamboo rod on the wall: rod art?
 
Grayone said:
Two cheap x style wine racks stacked from Amazon. Don't know why this is rotatedView attachment 168328
Click to expand...
I had to crop the top edge of mine to make it come in correctly. Recently another thread also mentioned image rotation issues.
 
I have a couple of bamboo rods I bought at an estate sale and they have no rod tubes. I assume they shouldn’t lean up against a wall for a long time or might get a permanent bend, especially in the tip? Or is that not something to worry about? I like the idea of the blueprint holders, but having hard time justifying close to $50 for one made out of corrugated cardboard.
 
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