I spoke with my father this morning and he asked me about getting his fly rod repaired. It's a Fenwick FF70 fiberglass rod (7'). He bought it some time in the early '70's. It's missing the top 6" or so. I've already contacted Fenwick - they don't offer repair of the rod (and, obviously, it's discontinued now). They offered a replacement for $81, which seems reasonable to me.
However, if anybody knows of any repair shops that might be able to fix it, I think he'd prefer to have it repaired. The shop can be anywhere - the rod can be shipped.
Ouch, he took 6" off? Ugh. There are rod makers who can fix it. But that's a tough spot. I've broken the butt and mid sections before. They were able to put a plug in and wrap it. But that far up the tip. UGH again. If you do the return on it, the rod you get back WILL NOT be the same quality as that old ferralite you have (trust me, did it once, won't EVER do it again). There's a guy in my area that my Dad used to take our rods to if we had an odd repair (as in broken, we can do most rewrapping jobs). But never that far up the tip. Usually anything we had broken at the tip, we'd just put a new tip top eye onto it and call it quits and have a shorter rod. I think they guy here was Ron's custom rods. Not a big company, he mostly just did it on the side. But he did some miracle work on a few rods that were damaged by accident on rods you couldn't send back in to be fixed (like my old Kunnans).
Thanks for the reply. I've contacted two guys that do rod repair so far, and their analysis is basically the same as yours. My father now has a 6'6" rod.
I found a phone listing for Ron's Custom Fishing Rods in Tacoma, WA. I gave it a call, but got no answer and then some strange noises on the line. I'll try calling again later, but I don't expect the answer to be any different than what I've already heard.
So, now the questions becomes this: What's better - the existing rod with a new tip-top but missing 6", or a full replacement rod (understanding that the replacement will be lower quality)?
That's great. Salmo was right, but wasn't sure about how much room you'd have inside to put a plug in. I know there wasn't alot of room near the tip section, so didn't want you to have too much hope. But hope it all works out for you. Trust me, I have a few fens with short tips. LOL. Most of ours though were door snips (those roll up windows on the old K5 Blazers were deadly) were about 2" breaks. So not much they could do with them except put a new tip top on them.
If that. I'm looking at an FF706 7' 6wt 2-piece brown Fenwick I use as a wall hanger here in my office. Last time I looked on eBay I found one for less than $30.
Another alternative is to ask the fiberglassflyrodder forum to see if anyone want to sell a broken rod. Then you will have a repaired tip and another junk tip for back up. This is a very popular vintage rod, you should be able to find one. There are also many independent rod makers in that board. Good luck!
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