New to the forum pages here, thought I’d share my latest “endeavour” if you want to call it that.
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My fly vest has that built in “rod holder” that kind of gawkingly presses my rod acros my chest from my left side (bottom of the vest with the loop) up across to the upper right (crosses over Pockets, pouches, everything I need to access when I need two hands free.
So I started thinking of ways to put the rod, on my vest. But still have access, and the beauty of hands free.. I stumbled upon a product that seems to pin to your vest, and allows hands free. But I’m Dutch blooded, so I couldn’t just pay for some one else’s stuff, right?
Then I got thinking. I took some house gold items, and fashioned them into shape, made them nice looking, painted them, and then strapped them down.
Heres what I did!
Started wirh 2 large picture hanger jigs. I cut the one so it would just be a straight shank with a hooked end. The second I cut so I could leave a small crook on one side, with a large hook on the other end.
Now the idea, was to position them opposite each other, and have the end holding the reel, hooked up, to hang the rod right up from the handle. The other hook across the chest piece, hooked down, with the crook facing up. The idea is that the weight of the reel on the butt of the rod is heavier than to rest of the rod (unbalanced) causing the shaft of the rod upwards. But if the tip (body of the rod) is placed in the hook across the chest, it holds the rod. Now the crook part was my rendition of a smaller hook that allows you to toss your line into, and hold it while tying new flies into leaders/tippets.
Attaching it was slightly harder, but thankfully I had some leather strapping (shoelace size) kicking around, so I drilled some holes and they almost lined up with the mesh body of the fly vest. All that was left was some coating of sorts. For This I had some rock guard sitting in the garage, so I drilled holes for threading straps through, and sprayed em! Weaves them through, cinched it tight, and there we have it!
all in all it was super easy, took about 30 minutes time, and I can change flies, land fish, take photos, all hands free!
