When you are fishing for beers, you are always looking for creative ways to reel in a monster. In a previous post, we discovered the custom craftsmanship of a fishing pole made out of a keg tap handle and really wanted to use one to play our drinking game. Who wouldn't want to reel in a beer using their favorite brewery's tap handle as part of their fishing rod? However, the price tag for some of these rods online was a little out of our budget, so we decided to build a homemade version that anyone can do by themselves with a few simple materials and tools.
Materials you need to build a DIY beer keg tap fishing rod
- Keg tap handle from a brewery you love (we found ours for $5 on Facebook marketplace)
- Ice fishing or standard sized fishing pole
- Fishing reel
- Fishing reel seat (self tapping screws and a drill are optional if you don't want to glue or epoxy it)
- Gorilla glue and epoxy
- Cutting tool such as a small saw, Dremel tool, etc.
- Shop towels
Steps to building the keg tap fishing pole at home
Step 1 — Gather your supplies
Start by gathering all of the items in the supply list above. Since we are using this pole for Beer Fishing, we opted for a stubby ice fishing pole. This was a cheap option that works perfectly for the drinking game because smaller poles make it seem like a bigger fight on the end of the line. We went with the largest brewery based in Kansas City, MO named Boulevard and highly recommend the Tank 7 if you haven't tried that beer before. We then cut off the cushion on the bottom handle portion of the rod to expose the pole.
Step 2 — Cut off the bottom of the rod
We then measured the amount of space needed within the golden threads of the Boulevard beer keg tap handle and cut the handle portion of the rod off to match. This will allow for a seamless look once the remaining handle portion is inserted into the tap.
Step 3 — Glue the rod into the threads
We then used Gorilla Glue to fill the golden threaded area and sticked the rod into the hole. The key is you want the glue to completely fill the hole or else the rod will wiggle and likely over time won't hold in place. We used shop towels quickly to remove any excess glue that pushed out of the hole.
Step 4 — Let it dry
It will take a little time to let the glue dry so read the back of the label to determine the proper drying time.
Step 5 — Mount the reel
The final step is to mount the reel in the center of the keg tap. One approach we have seen used is drilling the reel seat or reel directly with screws depending on how you want this to look. Mounting a reel seat provides the advantage of quickly swapping out the reel for a new one at any time. Some reel seats are designed with a curvature on the back to fit tightly around a narrow rod, so depending on your tap handle shape you may need to find a more flat version like we did. So we didn't have to drill holes and see screw heads, we decided to use Gorilla epoxy to mount the reel seat found on Amazon and then mount the reel into the seat. If all you had was Gorilla glue, it should be strong enough for a hold but the epoxy will really provide a stronger bond.
All said it only took us about 20-30 minutes to make not including the glue and epoxy drying times between steps. It was easier than we thought and turned out fantastic looking!
