Northwest Fishing Reports

I have an 8.5 foot GL2 Gloomis casting rod that I use for fishing for walleye, steelhead and small salmon. Over the last 1000+ hours of use the reel seat has worked loose and now will twist on the rod. The cork handle, line eyes and all other parts are ok....just the reel seat will twist when you have a fish on and you "palm" the rod and reel together.

Any suggestions on how to glue or pin or re-attach the reel seat to the graphite rod?

I looked online and found a couple suggestions. First one stated to obtain a syringe that would hold enough epoxy to reset the seat. Work the needle in behind the real seat and inject. Another suggestion was to drill a few small holes in the seat itself and inject epoxy through them. It was suggested to go to a feed store to find a syringe large enough. Hope this gives you some ideas. As far as epoxy, Cabelas or any rod-build shop will have the right stuff. There was another option that the butt handle be removed to get access to the seat but that sounded like a pain and could ruin the cork.

Injecting epoxy through a needle probably is not going to happen unless you have some Gorilla DNA hiding in your tree. It's just way too viscous. Drilling a small hole the size of the syringe nipple is a great idea and you can use any 5 min or 30 min epoxy from the hardware store. Just for the sake of stopping any further questions, Devcon. Personally I would go with 5 minute and thin it down with a little denatured alcohol. It's still going to be very stiff so put a piece of tape over the little hole in the syringe and slowly pour it in the back end or pick it up with your stir stick and let it drip in. Just set the plunger in the back of the syringe and tip it up so the bubble goes to the top before you try to push the plunger in. It will make a mess, have plenty of paper towels on hand. I would also tape around anywhere the glue could escape on the rod, this would be a good place to use that roll of super tape you bought at the sportsmans show or the fair, at least for the first layer and really stretch it. Follow up with masking tape. Squeeze it into the holes. I would put in just enough to make it wet all over and twist and turn the rod around till you get the inside well coated. For the record, I'd use 5 minute because the cure time will be substantially slowed when you thin it so I wouldn't worry about working time too much. 30 min or one hour epoxy will turn into 24hr cure time. And when you start to thin the epoxy go slow and use a few drops of thinner at a time. the big problem with a lot of custom and production rods is they use hinky material like masking tape to stabilize and center the reel seats. A good wash of epoxy should take care of that movement.