Sometimes you find the perfect fishing rod while on vacation but you can’t stand the idea of not having that beauty…especially those wonderful one-piece fishing rods that can do some work but are never going home safely in a regular car.
The best way to ship a northern pike fishing rod is to wrap the eyes and tip in bubble wrap, and place it inside a capped PVC pipe. This gives the protection the fishing rod needs to safely make it to its destination without damage.
While there are ways for shipping them in cardboard tubes or poster tubes, and these can work quite well for two-piece rods in particular, in my experience, and those of several experienced shippers I talked to, nothing compares to what PVC pipe brings to the table.
If you’re shipping a beautiful fishing rod back home to yourself when on vacation, or found a fishing rod that’s the perfect gift for that special someone in your family, we’ll go over why PVC pipe is the ideal shipping solution and what your other good solutions are if, for whatever reason, that’s not viable.
Let’s dive into it so you can get that pike fishing rod safely in the mail!
Shipping Pike Rods with PVC Pipe
This is the solution that my Dad, who makes custom one-piece fishing rods by hand for a living, and I both settle on. A little bit of bubble wrap around each eye and the tip to protect the parts of a fishing rod most likely to get damage from shaking or being battered around while in transit, then seal the ends with multiple layers of tape and you are good to go.
The article I wrote for Outdoor Know How on the best way to ship fishing rods came to the same conclusion and it’s not hard to see why. Try testing cardboard or poster board versus PVC pipe for durability. It isn’t even close.
The strength and durability that comes with PVC pipe makes it the clear winner against other options, though I’ve seen some poster storage tubes (these kind – not the cheap cardboard ones that could get smashed from being stepped on) get wrapped and put in a box that I would trust because of the extra reinforcement, but that still doesn’t match up against what some custom cut PVC pipe can do to make sure your new pike fishing rod (or muskie fishing rod, for that matter) gets from Point A to Point B safely.
1-Piece Fishing Rods Vs 2-Piece Fishing Rods
One of the biggest consideration is whether a fishing rod is 1-piece or 2-piece. For 2-piece fishing rods there are more viable shipping options since you’re not looking for a container that is 8 ft+ long. That makes things rougher, for sure, and again is another reason why PVC pipe is a popular material because it comes in very long lengths and decent widths and can be cut down to a perfect size before both ends are capped.
If you have a 1-Piece fishing rod you pretty much have to go with PVC or other custom shipping options. This is because the length of the rod makes shipping with any normal boxes or options impractical to impossible.
If you are shipping a 2-piece fishing rod, then you have a lot more options. Aside from PVC pipe there are normal all-purpose shipping boxes that are long and thin, designed for shipping things like two piece fishing rods and have a triangular shape for a bit extra support (I’d still be wary of this being mishandled – but many people have used it without issue). You should still make sure to get insurance for those just in case scenarios.
Poster tubes can be an excellent option for 2-piece fishing rods and although I’ve seen eBay shippers making videos of reinforcing these, I’d still almost want a larger poster tube like the ones I linked to above, bubble wrap, and put in a long thin box for shipping, but that might just be me.
The point is that with a 2 piece northern pike fishing rod you have a lot more options for shipping – but that doesn’t mean that the PVC pipe option still isn’t the best one, because in my opinion it 100% absolutely is.
I would say that in order of how good the options generally are based on, first and foremost, protection for the fishing rod itself followed by reliability and cost.
- PVC pipe
- Strong poster tube
- Cardboard poster tubes
- Regular post office boxes
Not sure how to use PVC pipe, though? This video below makes it pretty easy to see how it is done.
Ship Your Fishing Rods Safely With Confidence!
There are many options when it comes to shipping a fishing rod, though I personally think that the PVC pipe is the way to go. This provides next level protection that makes it almost certain the fishing rod you are sending through post is going to be safe from damage. Just be extra sure to secure those ends and make sure any printed address is legible and any bar code scannable!
As long as you take care of these details and make sure your measurements are right, you should have no problem shipping your new pike fishing rods wherever you want them to go!
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