Feature Profiles
9 January, 2026
SUMMER READING Reeling in the fishing fans with a custom rod
Meet the man making the fishing rods
IN AN old shipping container and a cramped ramshackle shed in Wedderburn, in the heart of the Loddon Valley, things of rare beauty are being crafted. Geoffrey Tripcony makes fishing rods, but not any old sort of rods. These are classics of their kind.
Geoffrey turned to making rods part-time after an horrific car accident in 2013 meant he was unable to work. He did a rod-making course, found some mentors and suppliers and got to business, despite his injuries. “I was like the Black Knight from Monty Python,” he said. “It’s only a flesh wound.”
Custom Rods was set up in 2015, with clients mainly sourced by word of mouth. There’s no such thing as buying off the shelf. Geoffrey sets up a face-to-face meeting with people looking for a hand-made rod, and over the course of an hour-and-a-half or so gets to know all about them. What kind of fish were they chasing? Did they fish from a riverbank or a tinny? Did they use a lure or bait? This gentle interrogation informs the kind of rod that clients will end up with. People tell him they are happy with a favourite rod. He tells them he wants to make a rod they will choose every time from their rack.
Making a custom rod takes time, and Geoffrey admitted he might only earn $15 an hour given the work that went into fashioning a rod from scratch. He refurbishes treasured rods, charging from $300-500, while his custom range is priced from $395 to more than $600. Now he might make five a month, driving a taxi in Bendigo to supplement the income from his labour of love.
Geoffrey’s physical and mental rehabilitation continues. Last year he entered the iconic Wycheproof King of the Mountain race, which involves hoisting a 60-kilogram wheat bag onto your shoulders and taking on a one-kilometre course up the world’s official shortest mountain – all 42 metres of it. “I wanted not to kill myself, and I wanted to finish,” he said. “I’m still here, and I finished the race.”
Last year, I wrote another piece on Geoffrey ... a man of hidden talents, a big man who looks much younger than his 56 years and with the scars from being a bull rider.
His right hand has a broad scar from a bull’s horn that looks like a river delta from above. And he tells you some of his stories.
Tripcony didn’t start bull riding until he was 31, an age when many are choosing – or are forced – to retire from the sport. Over the next 20 years, he says he spent 15 years taking part in competitions.
He entered rodeos in the Northern Territory, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria, won the event one year at the infamous Deniliquin Ute Muster, and appeared in a bull riding competition at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne when the tennis court was covered over with dirt for a rodeo fit for city slickers.
In 2013, he was sitting in a Mercedes van parked on the side of the road in Melbourne when a 20-tonne truck slammed into the van’s rear. He survived and today it’s Wedderburn where he quietly works away on fishing rods.