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One rod at a time: A McCook craftsman
McCOOK, Neb. - A good fisherman knows what a well-made rod can do out on the water. An even better fisherman knows where to get one built to his specifications.
Short rods to long rods, Matthew Eden of McCook is the right guy to make sure area fishermen are well equipped to take on anything from trout to pike to catfish. He is also the only person in the region who makes custom fishing rods by hand.
All the work he does is out of his sporting goods shop, Armadillo Arms and Sporting Goods, LLC, in McCook, which he built from the ground up. The store was Eden’s brainchild after leaving his previous job after years as a heavy equipment salesman. His father, Larry Eden, immediately rushed home from vacation to support him after hearing about what his son wanted to do.
The Eden men took off to Orlando, Florida, in April 2017 to take a two-day custom rod building class while the store was in the beginning stages of construction. They began crafting rods for about a month in Eden’s father’s basement until the store was ready enough to start building them there.
While the economy struggled during the COVID pandemic and custom rod sales slowed, the Eden family faced an additional loss when the elder Eden died in March 2021.
Business has since picked back up. In the last nine years, around 65 rods have been built. Aside from Nebraska customers, Eden has shipped custom rods to South Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Oregon.
Eden said fishermen usually just want a “good all-around pole,” but he takes pride in being able to offer something that chain stores can’t. With all the options for customization, no two rods will be the same unless ordered that way.
When shopping off the rack, the choice is limited to what happens to be available. With Eden, there are rods in 14 different colors, as well as 80 colors of wraps to choose from. He can also create mother-of-pearl or chevron wraps. As for grips, he offers three types. There is the standard cork grip, which was Larry Eden’s specialty, and the ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam grips that don’t absorb water, rot or swell. He also has the Winn golf grip, a popular choice.
“The nice thing, and the guys are loving these, is that when they get wet, they get sticky,” Eden said. “They don’t slip in your hands.”
It’s not all about the looks, though. It’s also about the quality of the rod and making sure it’s the right tool for the job.
“I do a lot of basic rods, because a basic rod will get you your walleye. It will get you your bass or whatever,” said Eden. “But a lot of guys want specific brands for specific things. They know quality.”
One advantage of a custom build is that the rod can be better tuned and more precisely balanced.
“I can add weight to the rear to tune how you want to fish. Do you want it to stay up in your hand or are you doing a lot of jigging, so you want to have more weight to the front where it teeters back and forth better?” he explained.
Eden also uses higher-quality materials. One example is the eyelets he selects, which use nickel-iron oxide or ceramic rings, materials that resist wear from fishing lines that can cut through cheaper alternatives.
“I also don’t use cheap fiberglass blanks. Everything I use is an IM6 or IM8,” said Eden, referring to the strength of the graphite fibers.
The time it takes to complete a custom rod depends on a number of factors, like the pole length and style, the type of handle, the number of eyelets and the wrap customizations. Many builds can take around 26 to 30 hours, and he’s been known to work while sitting for five to six hours at a stretch.
“I’ve had a lot of fun with it for the last nine years,” he said, smiling, “But I’ve cussed a lot over the years, too. It’s relaxing to a point, but it’s very tedious in the same breath.”
The rod artist goes through
gallons of rubbing alcohol a year due to the amount of cleaning necessary between each part of the process, which can be time-consuming. Since it takes approximately 14 feet of string per wrap, one spool only allows for completing two rods.
Eden prefers to do his wraps by hand rather than with an electric wrapping machine because he can feel the threads better and has more control, especially when he’s adding pinstripes. Even so, sometimes things don’t work in his favor, he said.
“It’s just like any other hobby. If you’re in the right mood to do the hobby, you’re in the right mood to do the hobby,” Eden said. “If you ain’t in the right mood to do the hobby, things don’t go together right.”
Eden has taught four rod-building classes, though only one participant chose to continue building rods afterward, a reflection of how demanding the process can be. He also recently taught McCook High School students how to craft rods during the annual Bison Days event, even purchasing additional equipment so participants could have their own setups.
Beyond custom builds, he completes about 75 rod repairs each year, most of them during the summer months. His reputation is such that customers often cannot tell a rod was ever broken. A jack of the sporting goods trades, he is the only one in the area that repairs and tunes bows and custom-shortens arrow shafts to the shooter’s preferred length.