Our Top Tips to Protect Your Rods on Your Next Fishing Trip

You’ve got the cooler freshly stocked with ice and provisions. All your fishing gear is ready to be packed into the truck. You’ve topped off the tank and kissed your better half. All systems are go for fishy adventure. 

Only there’s one thing that’s been bugging you: what to do with your fishing rods? What’s the best way to transport those?

Fishing Pole Transport

It’s not the kind of thing you want to relegate to an afterthought. Fishing pole transport is something that deserves careful consideration. You’ve got a lot invested in those awkwardly and inconveniently shaped pieces of equipment. 

Sure, they’re really good at what they do, but they’re long and thin, which means they can be awkward to bring along. When it comes to getting them safely to the lake, beach, or river undamaged, it’s not like there are a lot of options. 

Ways to Protect Your Fishing Poles in Transit

Let’s get the obvious solution out of the way first. Genies and wizards aren’t real. It can be sketchy putting an ad out on Indeed or Marketplace for one of those anyway, and life can be weird enough some days already. There must be a better way.

So here are a few top tips on fishing pole transportation.

  • Always transport your fishing rods with zero tension, on both rod and reel
  • Remove all hooks and lures for safety
  • Consider using an old (clean) sock or two for each pole, one to cover the reel and another to cover the rod tip
  • It’s best to hold the rod the way you would when using it: by the handle

Fishing poles are able to flex and bend to a phenomenal degree, but over time this produces stress cracks. It’s best to keep the tension off unless you’re actually working a fish.

The best way to unintentionally injure yourself, your buddy, or your dog is to accidentally hook them. Removing a barbed hook from one of your own appendages is mighty inconvenient, to say the least, and it’s been known to put a strain on the friendship if you have to remove it from someone else. It’s best to take your leaders off in transport.

The reel is a complicated mechanism, so the cleaner it stays the better. Your spouse might even thank you for finding a use for those old worn-out socks you insist on keeping.

Just like on your boat, the best way to transport a fishing pole is by the handle, so if you can, try to use something that allows for that in your quest to find the ultimate fishing pole transportation solution.

A Better Way

A car fishing rod holder that’s purpose-built is going to protect your rods in transit. Keep tension off, hold them by the handle, and it will be easy to use. 

Maybe the best fishing pole holder ever has already been invented. It’s almost as if a genie or wizard really did show up to provide you with everything you could ever ask for in fishing pole transport.