Old Nate,

I'm a sometimes fan of cheap or inexpensive equipment, and I bought a couple Okuma salmon rods a few years ago. My report is that some cheap gear has served me better than others. One of the rods has been fine so far. The other has had issues: 1. the reel seat came loose from the blank, but since I have built a lot of rods, I was able to fix it satisfactorily; 2. the handle cork grip is kinda' fake. What looks like cork rings really aren't. They are a surface cover and are beginning to come off, revealing the "under" handle, but I haven't yet figured out what it is.

Cork is a significant cost in rod building these days, so I'm thinking about building up such rods in the future from blanks. Not as cheap as the cheap imports by any means, but less expensive than other alternatives.

Sg