Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Rod repair: loose reel seat

The reel seat on my 10.5 foot sockeye rod came loose while playing fish yesterday. It rotates easily around the rod now, and though I am ept enough to control that while fishing, it is annoying.

How to repair, quickly, without missing any fishing?

I am considering boring a hole into the reel seat to access the space between it and the rod, then use a hypodermic syringe to squirt that space full of epoxy(?), let it sit overnight and carry on.

Good or bad way to fix the problem? I am not keen on taking the long cork lower handle off to be able to slide the reel seat off the rod. The lower handle and upper section of cork above the reel seat are both firmly glued in place, no movement. Just the reel seat spins.

Using epoxy like you mentioned is a good fix. Another way to help prevent it from rotating is pin it in place. Drill an appropriate size hole in the reel seat and install a roll pin or a small brad (with the head cut off) with epoxy.

I think the epoxy is the ticket. A hole drilled through and pinned may cause the rod to break when under heavy load. No offence intended fishhead.

No offense taken. It could be an issue but ...

If the rod blank is drilled through, the pin is epoxied in place, and it's not a salt water rod that has extreme stress on the reel seat it will work.

The reason why is the real seat (no matter what type) adds extra strength to that area. If you were drilling a hole in only the rod blank it would be an issue but the rod blank is wrapped by the reel seat and everything is held together by epoxy.

If you're worried about creating a stress point then drill through, and pin, only half of the rod blank.

Thanks. I think I'll try epoxy alone first time around. I've hooked king salmon up in the 40 lbs. accidentally when fishing for sockeye-- and they give the rod some MAJOR stress!

I bought my son all the components to build a steelhead rod back when he was like 10. Got everything from lamiglass and as I remember everything was epoxied togather.

I've epoxied and roll pinned the seat on a couple of my light fast action bead fishing rods. 10.5' ultralight steelhead rigs basically. I use a 1/16" roll pin and 5 minute epoxy in a syringe just like you suggested. Works great, broke rods after the repair but never at the seat.

FWIW progress report: I am too busy fishing and too tired each evening to repair the rod, so will wait until salmon season is over. Will go with quality rod building epoxy.

Meanwhile the rod has been in use nearly every day. Fished four mornings this week and caught a two fish limit of sockeye each day plus my one Chinook allowed on three of those mornings. Sample pic below of the rod, a Chinook and two sockeye. The Chinook I have landed have run from 12-20 lbs. I lost a big heavy one.

Nice pile of chrome you've got there. We are pretty much done for the season, silvers are in but slowing down and starting to turn. Made two evening runs upriver a short ways to a secluded slough last week, lights out silver fishing tossed back several limits in the interest of fun before keeping our pair each. But the water level has dropped, making it hard on props and shear pins!