Rods come in all shapes and sizes these days. What’s even cooler is that a rod can come in exactly your shape and size. There is a growing segment of custom rod makers using widely available components and building rods on their own. I wanted to do a bit different fishing rod review and review a rod made from custom components from Batson Enterprises’ brands: RainShadow, ALPS and ForeCast.

Many folks aren’t familiar with Batson, so here is the 15-second rundown: they are the largest American rod component company that makes many of the rod components you see on a lot of the popular rods on the market today. They make everything from blanks, reel seats, grips, guides, tips, handles and a lot more to completely spec out and build your own custom rod or have someone make one for you.

If you go to their batsonenterprises.com site you could spend hours looking at components, studying technology, and reading the forums on building your own rods. But we asked Karry Batson and CEO Bill Batson to build us a rod with their blanks, components and everything in the action and power of our choosing so we could put it to the test and see how we liked the fit and finish of each individual part in one custom-made rod.

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