Treasure Island Custom Rods

Great day at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC with my lovely wife Karyn Livingston. She loves to plan these trips and I’m the beneficiary and am thankful! The Biltmore was the summer home of the Vanderbilts and built in 1895. Only a small house of 165,000 square feet of living space! The house is amazing and the blown glass exhibit was extraordinary!

Don't the Minions just make you smile! It's only preseason but still excited for the Lions season ahead.

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Recently had the pleasure to breathe another 40 years into this vintage Eagle Claw Spinning Rod. 40 years of herring scales removed, repaired the cork grips and put new guides on the rod. This was a fun project Joe Rector If you have an old rod with sentimental value or love how the rod fishes but it has seen better days...reach out to me and we can discuss in detail. Chip Bragg your vintage rods are up next!

Happy 4th of July!

On July 20th the Midlands Striper Club will host its annual youth tournament on Lake Murray. I am donating this custom rod to be raffled off to some lucky kid to use for years to come. Come out and fish the tournament with some kids. These are progress pictures as the rod isn’t quite finished yet. The rod will showcase a custom fish grip that is chasing its next meal of neon blue back herring. This spinning rod is 6’ and will be a great all around rod for a kid to use and enjoy fishing! Shoutout to Bill Ballou for a fabulous set of fish grips that is paired with decorative thread work for the neon blue back herring.

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I am honored to have Anglers Resource do a rod builders profile on me. The profile goes chronicles my love of fishing from an early age and how I came to be a custom rod builder.

We are selling our condo on Lake Webster. This condo's address is the inspiration behind Treasure Island Custom Rods name! We have two Open Houses scheduled for this weekend; Saturday 11 to 12:30pm and Sunday 12 to 1:30pm. Be in by summer and enjoy the pool, beach and 2 deeded boat slips! The lake is a good bass fishery along with Pickerel and an underappreciated Crappie population. Click the link below to find out more!

704 Treasure Island Rd Unit 704, Webster, MA 01570 | realtor.com® 704 Treasure Island Rd Unit 704, Webster, MA 01570 is for sale. View 40 photos of this 2 bed, 3 bath, 1874 sqft. condo with a list price of $549000.

Finally found time to take better pictures of the rod I entered into the 2024 International Rod Building Challenge! Every year making the top 10 is my goal but, this year I won! Congratulations to all of the top 10 finalists and to Gary Allner and Gary Pugh for finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively! The grips are made of red cedar with a hand carved inlay and color shifting metal flake. The inspiration for the rod came from standing in the surf doing battle with a nice fish. I combined different techniques from a Bernie Cohen dugout style grip inlay with Bill Falconer variegated gold flake dragon scale for the inlay and finished the grip similar to Bill Ballou fish grips. Both of the BIll's techniques were featured in RodMaker Magazine. Also, Don Shafar at Backbone Custom Rods helped me put a beautiful painted color to a very rough looking blank when I received it.

I want to give a shout out to Cole Sands Fishing for a great day out on Lake Murray Saturday! I was lucky enough to draw Cole to be his marshal for the day during the Bassmaster Elite Tournament on Lake Murray! Good luck the rest of the way...you have a new fan! For those that don't know what a marshal does during a bass tournament, we ride with the pro and observe. Best way I can describe this...is it's like carrying the scoring sign during a PGA event and getting to watch up close what they do and how they do it. It has been a cool experience made better by a great professional like Cole!

Just finished a Clemson themed pan fish UL rod as a thank you to our contractor, Greg Dennis. Dennis Home Improvement did a great job on our door installations and roofing project. Custom turned red cedar grip with color shifting Clemson inlay.

Just getting around to posting the grip I worked on over the weekend. Making a Clemson themed pan fish rod as a thank you to our contractor Dennis Home Improvement for doing a great job on our roofing and door installation projects!

I was out field testing more Treasure Island Custom Rods yesterday and caught my PB Lake Murray largemouth. 7.04 lbs and yes I included the .04! LOL!

Boy was I surprised and honored when I saw this post come across my feed earlier today showing one of my custom rods featured on the cover of the preeminent magazine dedicated to custom fishing rods. Thanks to RodMaker Magazine for selecting my custom rod to be on the cover! I started seriously building custom rods 6 years ago and always dreamed of having one of my custom rods make it into the magazine let alone on the cover!

The Volume 27 #2 issue of RodMaker mails this Monday, April 1st. Subscribers will receive it during the 3rd week of April.

I called this the “Black Ninja” rod. It is a simple black on black color scheme with a Chinese star decorative thread wrap and custom burl cork split grips. Nice rod for plastic fluke fishing on Murray. Built on a medium power 2 piece blank rated 1/4-3/4 oz with a fast tip.

Beautiful morning on Lake Murray

People ask me why buy a custom built rod? There are multiple reasons: Is there something you don’t like about your factory rod? Do you want a one of a kind build? Do you want a rod built for a specific fishing technique? I delivered this custom built rod yesterday with a custom made grip to the customer’s specification to be longer and thicker in diameter than his factory built rods. He loved how the rod felt in his hand and can’t wait to field test it! Rod Forge Anglers Resource Mud Hole Custom Tackle

Anglers Resource just finished laying out a Fuji Guide train for the Point Blank (691MXF) blank I won at International Custom Rod Building Exposition reception during ICRBE. This blank paired with the new Fuji carbon reel seat is going to be one mean fish catching machine!

I fished in the Midlands Striper Club February tournament yesterday and did all right finishing in the middle of the pack with 14.85lbs for two fish limit. The first tournament I fished in December I had the smallest creel. Although that last place finish pays out. I’m less than a year into learning the Striper game. I want to thank the Midland Striper Club for accelerating my learning curve and I have met some great people. The club meets monthly on the 2nd Tuesday of the month if your interested.

Atrex 3.5 Custom Pay Lake Catfish Rod. This rod has a Georgia Bulldog color scheme and was built to recognize an employee. The decorative wrap is called a 3D spot light star and works nicely with recognizing the employee!

Working on a pay lake catfishing rod. This decorative wrap was finished up over the weekend. It’s called a 3D Spotlight Star. The rod is going to be a surprise gift for an employee’s contribution. I thought the 3D spotlight star was appropriate for this recognition.

Awesome day fishing today in the 1000 Islands today. We caught lots of fish with a few good ones over 4 lbs and i caught a 27” Walleye weighing in at 7.5 lbs. It was my PB Walleye. The Bassmaster Elites started their tournament here today. The top 48 of 102 anglers all had over 20 lbs for a limit of 5 smallmouth. Our boat’s best 5 including the walleye was 21 lbs. LOL. Those guys are good! Matt Livingston

Here is the latest rod from my shop. $200 A nice 3 piece 6’ 6” travel rod. Built on a Rainshadow SB781-3 rated fast action, 6-12 lb line and 1/8-3/8 oz with a beautiful gold leaf color shifting dragon scale wrap. Great rod for those fly in Canadian trips or hiking adventures along a trout/smallmouth stream or when you want to bring a rod to show off on your buddy’s boat. Perfect for drop shot, NED rig and trout spinners.

Lake Murray the new home of TI Custom rods and #4 bass lake in US for 2023! Cool that I get to field test rods here on a regular basis.

Good morning so far! 2 nice large mouth and 6 short stripers. Ian looking forward to booking into a good Striper because the little ones hit like a freight train! Happy Fathers Day!