Storm Warning: Brad Vanderpool’s Tornado-Proof Rods

Nearly three years ago I decided I needed a heavier-than-normal travel rod, something that could sling big swimbaits in Mexico and tame mean peacocks and payara in the Amazon. There weren’t many three- or four-piece versions available in anything but medium or medium-heavy action “do everything” rods. Those wouldn’t cut it. Fortunately someone on Facebook told me about Oklahoma’s F5 Custom Rods, and even better my friend Lin Bell at Fishing Pro Tech had one of their three-piece Departure series travel rods in stock.

Since then I’ve fished it A LOT and it’s made multiple trips to exotic locations (not for tuna yet, but I have a feeling that’s coming). While I’ve acquired multiple other swimbait sticks, I still find myself gravitating to that original F5. It fishes like a one-piecer, in fact, even better.

Over time as I’ve started to haunt the swimbait pages I’ve notice that not only is F5 highly respected in those quarters, but that owner Brad Vanderpool is an active participant in the swimbait community. I also acquired one of their new “Conceal Carry” five-piece rods. I caught up with Brad and his fiancée Lisa as they made the long haul from Oklahoma to Virginia for The Gathering 4. Here’s his story, in his own words:

HPFC: How did you get started building rods?

Vanderpool: It was around 2014 or 2015. I had fished all of my life, but I had just started fishing swimbaits, and back then having a custom rod was really the thing to do. I got a couple of quotes and really got to thinking it was a sizeable amount of money – I wondered if I could do it myself because I was always kind of a crafty person my whole life. I had some money saved up, so I watched a couple of YouTube videos and bought all of the equipment that I needed. I bought good stuff, not stuff to just get by. It was a large purchase for me. I built a few, and to be really honest with you I was terrible, like really, really bad.

I became friends with a guy in Southern California named Anthony Driscoll. He works at Last Chance Tackle out there and he guided me all the way through it. He was really a mentor, not just somebody who told me how to do it, but any time I would have a question he would ask me another question in response. If I didn’t know why the epoxy was doing what it was doing he would ask me a question so that I would figure it out on my own, which was really beneficial. Other than that, everything kind of fell in line and just kept going and going and going. Then I asked a couple of my buddies to maybe buy a rod. I did it really cheap and they loved them. From there, I knew I had a passion for it. I loved doing it every day after work. I’d work a 10 to 12 hour day at the car dealership service department, and then I’d come home and stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning building rods and it didn’t hurt me.

HPFC: At what point did it become a full-time business?

Vanderpool: It’s been full-time since 2017.

HPFC: Why did you name the company F5?

Vanderpool: I grew up in southwest Kansas, Tornado Alley. Then moving to Oklahoma nothing changed. To be honest with you, it’s not a super-original name. If I could go back I might change that, but now I can’t do anything about it. In Oklahoma there’s a lot of companies around with the F5 insignia.

HPFC: There are a lot of good production and custom rods out there today. What distinguishes your rods?

Vanderpool: That’s a tough question to answer. I have my own biased opinion, but what I feel is different is the style of work, the cleanliness. We take a lot of time to design something to maybe not necessarily be the lightest rod on the market, but we try to be the most durable. We know that you’re spending a lot of money, whether it’s our lowest end all the way up to our highest end it’s still a chunk of your paycheck. We want you to be able to have it for a long period of time. Fishing rods aren’t jackhammers. I tell a lot of people it’s not a hammer and an anvil, it’s a fishing rod. It has to be strong but it also has to be limber. Being durable is big for us.

Components-wise, there are only so many quality companies. Besides the really big companies that are pushing volume, most companies today use those quality components. We try to use American Tackle the majority of the time. I’ve been with American Tackle for four years. I really love them, not just the components but the company. The guys there are fantastic people. I can call and talk to them just as a friend if I needed advice or call about the components. It’s just a great company. Still, you have to make sure you put the right things on the right products. Double foot guides are important when it comes to swimbaits because you’re going to be banging these things around.

HPFC: Looking through the galleries of your rods, it seems like you have a lot of fun with the process, in terms of your designs and your collaborations. Is that just the natural byproduct of your love of it, or is there some intention to have a personalized experience?

Vanderpool: I think it’s our vision. It comes from having fun with it, but also from having a vision of what’s the end product going to be. Some people can’t envision that. There are a lot of components that can go into a rod, and then a million different thread colors, and a lot of them I’d want to put on a rod, but I haven’t figured out a way to make it look attractive. Especially with customs, the customer has the vision in their head, but it’s not what they do for a living, so they don’t see the actual end product. You have to tweak it a little bit. So it’s my vision when it comes to style. It’s like the way you dress – you’re not going to wear plaid pants with a striped shirt.

HPFC: You’re one of the few builders who makes a swimbait travel rod, a very popular travel rod. In fact, that’s how I first found out about your company. Where did that market need come from and what are the challenges of making a multi-piece rod for throwing big baits?

Vanderpool: When we first started to build the Departure, I knew there was nothing in that category that was able to travel and also the length that we like. When you talk about swimbaits, up until maybe a year or a year and a half ago, you weren’t looking at 7’6” rods. You were looking at 8’ or 8’6” and there was nothing out there as far as a multi-piece travel rod. I figured that could be my “in.” I just wanted to have a foothold in the market and give the brand some attention that it otherwise couldn’t get because I wasn’t a big name. So we did the Departure and that was an extreme challenge. With sections, you have to fit a blank inside of a blank. That’s going to make it stiff. You want it to not be so stiff so that it won’t function as a fishing rod. It may not be the most limber rod, but again durability is a key factor. I think we hit the mark there.

HPFC: I pick it up all the time, even before some of the one-piece swimbait rods that I own. Now you have the Mini Mag, which is five pieces instead of three. How much harder is it to build that and make it as functional and durable?

Vanderpool: I have a lot of help from my team. They are pretty much engineers helping to design this. I’m not doing the math, but I’m the one who says, “This is the end product.” With the five-piece, you can see that we changed the ferrules because I wanted a little bit more flexibility and I wanted to bring down the overall length packed away. The original with the case was like 38 inches or so and while that may be compact in terms of an 8-foot rod, it’s not when it comes to getting on an airplane. A lot of guys were having trouble getting their rod in the tube on an airplane without having to pay for a checked bag. Some airlines are different than others and it’s only getting worse. So I decided we were going to design a rod that could easily go in a checked bag and you wouldn’t ever have to worry about it, and still have the same characteristics as the Departure as far as weight ranges and quality. Again, I think we nailed it. Time will tell.

HPFC: Despite effectively being a custom rod with top shelf components, your rod prices remain remarkably reasonable. How long will you be able to keep them there and what forces might result in a change?

Vanderpool: I’m trying to drive my prices down. You may have seen the post I made with Wayne [Campbell, of Swimbait Universe] recently. When we do a collaboration it’s important to us – obviously, the bottom line is important, because I’m a business. We’re here to put food on the table for our families, but Swimbait Universe being what it is we want to provide something to the members to show our appreciation to them. I’ve said it before, it’s passion over profit. We have to make a profit no matter what, but the passion about it is more important. The community is what drives everything and it’s a very niche community. It’s growing exponentially but it’s still very important to take care of every little guy. Not everybody can afford a $400 rod, so let’s drive this price down as far as we can go and still profit. I think we did that with this one. The previous Universe collab was $289. With everything that has changed in the past year and a half or so since we did it, prices went up but we took a little bit of a cut in the margins. That was more important than more money in the bank.

HPFC: You hinted at it a little bit there: What does the swimbait community mean to you, and what do people on the more mainstream side of the fishing world need to know about it?

Vanderpool: I am also in the mainstream community. I’ve been in it all of my life. But once I started throwing swimbaits and started fellowshipping with these other guys, that all have this passion – which to the rest of the fishing industry is sore of a weird passion, it’s kind of taboo – it was nice to be with likeminded guys, talking about big, wild baits. This is a family. It’s a brotherhood and it means the world to me to be a part of it. Driving out here to Virginia for The Gathering, I’m not sure I’d do that for the Classic, but I’ll do it for the swimbait community. No offense to the Classic but these people are family. We’ll go to the ends of the earth to make sure that we see them once a year and continue to provide them a product that will help them fulfill their goals, which are not easy.

HPFC: So what are your goals for yourself and for your company?

Vanderpool: Well, short-term, Lisa and I just got engaged, so getting this wedding kicked off next year is a big goal. We want to continue to live our lives and raise our family in the way that we see fit financially, emotionally and spiritually. As a company, I want to grow. I don’t ever want to be stagnant. We have a lot of things coming. We’re going to always do collaborations – we have collaborations with the Universe, with Pizz. We’re always going to do major collaborations with Pizz Swimbaits. We did the travel rod for Baccarac Lodge and we did the Conceal Carry Mini Mag. As a company we want to grown and grow and grow and be as big as we can be and still have the right mindset of community and fellowship of fishing.