The Sharky Custom Rods Story

Sharky Custom Rods started in 2022 in Hammonton, New Jersey, with Christian Dawkins building rods after hours — while teaching high school science full time by day. What began as a side passion for putting the right tool in an angler’s hands quickly outgrew the garage.

In January 2024, Christian’s brother Micco joined him, and the two moved the operation to Little Egg Harbor, NJ. At the time, Christian was still teaching, and Micco was still in college — building custom rods around class schedules, tests, and lesson plans. But the work kept coming, and it became clear this wasn’t a side hustle anymore.

This past October, Christian left the classroom for good. Last May, Micco graduated and joined full time. Today, Sharky Custom Rods is a three-man shop, in the shop seven days a week. Christian runs the business end — quoting builds, managing orders, and talking through every custom spec with customers directly. Micco handles the craft — the wraps, the finish, the details that make a rod look as good as it fishes.

Christian and Micco design every blank together. It started with the Taxman, our original build — and it’s grown from there into rods for multiple species, applications, and styles of fishing, each one shaped around the angler it’s built for. Every design draws on our own time on the water, plus what we learn from the thousands of anglers we talk to every year. That feedback loop is what keeps our lineup evolving instead of standing still.

We’re not just builders — we’re anglers first. When we’re off the clock, you’ll find us running our 23’ Seacraft out of the Little Egg/Holgate and Barnegat inlets, targeting sheepshead, fluke, striper, tuna, mahi, and cobia. That time on the water shapes every rod that leaves our shop. We’ve built for weekend warriors chasing their first striper, inshore regulars, commercial charter captains running trips daily, and tournament teams competing for tuna and marlin purses.

Every rod is built by hand, by people who actually fish the water it’s built for.