How to store fishing rods for travel

How do you protect your valuable fishing rods from getting bashed around in the back of your car? Rod recently came up with a cheap way to keep his precious rods safe from harm. Check out the pictures below.

Anyone who has been following Rod and Jess on Instagram knows that they’ve been just a little obsessed with fishing lately. We blame our outfitter, Brad, who got them addicted to fly fishing during some downtime on their last New Zealand hunt. We’ve lost count of the number of hours they’ve been out on the water, trying to catch a Tasmanian brown trout – or watching YouTube videos on how to cast, or tie their own flies… You get the picture. 

Rod has always been big on storage solutions, so it was only time before his mind started coming up with ways to store all his new fishing equipment.

While we don’t claim this is the best idea in the world (there’s probably fifty other ways you could do this) it’s certainly simple, cost-effective and does the job – and works just as well for storing them in the shed, or for travelling with them in the back of the SportsCat and Navara. 

Each tube fits two rods comfortably, and we’ve attached a couple to the roof (though you could just as easily fix them to the sides as well).

In the prototype in the image (above), Rod attached the tubes using cable ties looped around the tube. However, when he made the finished version (left), he drilled seating holes into the tube and passed the cable ties through these to give a cleaner finish.

It took about 30 minutes to make two rod holders once we’d worked out the dimensions and the method. 

Feel free to have a go at making it the way we did, or use this as an idea starter for coming up with your own ingenious way. If you do have a better way to store fishing rods (or even rifles) while travelling, we’d love you to see them. Send us an email at team@huntshack.net if you’d like us to feature your ideas on I Am Hunter. 

What you’ll need: 

• PVC Pipe (110mm diameter by 1100mm long)
• PVC screw top (end cap) with lid
• Reciprocal saw
• Box cutter/Stanley knife
• Drill
• Cable ties
• Ruler or measuring tape
• Duct tape
• PVC primer and glue (or epoxy)
• Marker pen or pencil
• File

What to do: 

Measure out and mark up the rod holder grooves – one on each side of the pipe and the screw top – the measurements we used were 20mm wide and 300mm long. Cut out using the reciprocal saw. File the cuts to take out the sharp edges and cover the edges with duct tape to provide better protection for your rods.  

Glue the end cap to the pipe using the PVC primer and glue or epoxy.  

Next, drill seating holes into the pipe for the cable ties. We drilled them at 150mm in from the ends and 50mm apart. 

Finally, cable tie in a convenient place in the back of your car. As the Navara has a hard canopy on the back, we’ve cable tied to the ceiling on the canopy. The SportsCat has a hard tonneau cover so we have cable tied to the underneath of the tonneau. However, you could just as easily attach to the rear roof of a 4WD wagon, to the sides of a ute tray, or even to the rear of a normal car boot. 

We’ve also decided to add a few to the roof of the shed for some easy, out of the way storage. 

Below is a very quick video of how it works.