Drilled my first holes

Well i mounted one of my ram tube rod holders Sunday and got my penn reel spooled up with 275 yds of 20#. i went cheap this time with mono instead of braid but i wanted to test out some things before i went with braid.  Now i need a leash for my rod. What kind of leashes do you guys use or prefer?

First hole out of the way, now your free to roam about your plastic poking holes all over the place.   

I was already used to this kind of modification to "new" shiney stuff coming from the ATV background that I wasn't skeer'ed to start drill'n.  The first hole drilled is the "ice breaker", then its no holds barred.

I made my own leashes for my poles and paddle.  If I remember I'll post up some pics of the final products. 

In a nutshell I picked up some cell phone car chargers from Goodwill, and snipped off both ends.
 


Made loops at both ends and closed each loop with an 1/8" aluminum swedge.  Since I don't have an actual swedging tool, I just hit the recessed area with my air chisel just enough to put a serious clamp down on the wires.   

Not sure what a swedge is, heres a picture. 


Then I just used one of two kinds of clips to secure to the kayak.  On the paddle and one rod leash, I used aluminum carabiner like these.



The other two pole leashes got anodized aluminum versions of these.


As for the connection to the rod, I had the wife sew up some dual sided velcro to wrap around the rod in front of the reel like all the otherones out there.  These work great on my level wind reel, but I need to figure out a better way to secure to my spinning reel equip rods.  Theres just too much going on near the reel and gets in the way. 

Ghetto style here (again)
 I just tied a brass snap to one end of a nice twine, and tied the other end to an aluminium clip I took off of the CHEAP chain type fish stringer. ( I have used all of those clips now  )
 I attach the brass snap to the boat and use the clip to go around the reel.