For many September 26 marks the official end of the fishing season. I typically stop my trout fishing by mid-November and go through my ritual of cleaning all of my equipment, most importantly my rods.
I pull my rods out one by one and wipe them down with a warm soapy mixture of water and Dove Soap. Wipe the rod dry and make sure the guides are clean. You can use a little bit of mineral spirits on a Q-Tip to get any additional residue off of the guides. Make sure you clean both the female and male parts of the ferrule. Again you can use a small amount of denatured alcohol or mineral spirits to clean them out using a Q-Tip. Many hang their rods in their given bags up in a cool dry closet, this is a good ritual. I just keep them in their given cases, take the cap off, and place them upright in my rod racks. I typically am very diligent about keeping a journal so I record the amount of use I put on any one particular rod, its kind of like keeping track of your mileage on your car. I do this primarily because I track and rotate my tips from one season to the next rather than throughout any one particular season. This allows me to keep track easier and its one less tip to clean in an entire quiver at the end of a season. A journal is also a great way to keep track of what rod needs some extra TLC, cleaning, or repairs. I recently received a rod from a past client that needed some refinishing work after a decade of hard use. He sent the rod back to me in the spring because he simply forgot about the task from the previous fall. He wanted to get his rod back for the Hendrickson Hatch in PA about a week later, needless to say he was able to use the rod at the tail end of the hatch. Its a lot easier to send the rod in the fall for a winter “face lift” if needed. Again a journal can prove to be helpful in many ways from season to season.
~Clint Joseph Bova