Could anyone tell me the pros and cons of the spiral wraped guides?

Good question Scott, I'll be waiting on these answers myself...all i've heard are the pros...but there has to be a trade-off.....there always is

The spiral wrap was the single most widely discussed topic at the recent Custom Rod Builders Guild meeting in Nashville. The conclusion I reached was that the only negative is the strange looks you will get from people who have never seen a spiral wrap before. It appears to be the Next Big Thing in rod building!

they are harder to sell to the uninformed. resistance to change is a powerful thing i guess.

As luck would have it, I cast my first "Roberts Wrap" rod today.
Most of my fishing it typically with a Loomis GLX 844c rod coupled with a Shimano 200GT (11 bearings) . The rod which I was able to play with today was extremely accurate and felt marvelous. The accuracy of the sprial wrap rod really caught me off guard, I am talking about my first cast landing about 3 inches from its target.

I will be ordering parts tommorrow to tie a spiral wrap rod.

All of my fishing is salt water for Redfish, Specked Trout and flounder - toss is a few 4' sharks for fun.

Tight lines to all

Robert

Yesterday I was in the shop of guy who has been in the rod repair business for many years and has repaired thousands. I occasionally buy some parts from him (when I have too). He seldom builds rods and the one's I've seen are pretty atrocious. When I brought up the subject of sprial rods he acted like they had no place in the fishing world. All sorts of bum dope about how they put additional strain on the blank, etc. His biggest objection was that they were ugly and serious anglers rejected them. No amount of explaining the facts from me would convince him otherwise. I also questioned a person who fishes the tournament trail across the country about whether or not he sees very many of them. His reply was "sometimes, but not too popular".

It's strange but some anglers totally reject them and several of my customers readly accept the radical design and want to try them. I'm delivering a seven foot spinner bait casting rod today to a bass club member who is very anxious to try it.

All it will take to get the total acceptance is for the BASS professionals to exhibit one with their promotions. The only problem is they will only advertise the ones supplied by their sponsers, regardless of the ones they actually fish with.

Just let Bill Dance show one on his TV show and the rush will be on.

The only con I have heard is that line might accumulate on one side of the reel if the first guide is not on the spine. Reading my back issues of RodMaker, one article said this doesn't really happen (I believe it was the O'Quinn article) and another article (on "Revolver" rods) said it does happen (on non-jump fished lures). Who should I believe?

I wonder- if line isn't accumuating on one side, that means there is an angle from the level-wind guide onto the spool. This is not normal, and the level-wind mechanism on a reel might be subject to more pressure than it is made to take. This would argue for using the "Revolver" style- putting the first guide slightly opposite of the spiral wrap side. On the other hand, the difference between the first guide at 45 or 0 degrees is only about an inch (laterally), so maybe it really doesn't matter.... I'm making a set of 9 trolling rods that will be fished daily for several months on a charter boat. The lines, lures, and reels will be identical. I'm thinking of doing an experiment to compare the two methods- to see it one makes line stack up more than the other.

The fact is that properly executed, there are simply no performance disadvantages to a spiral wrapped rod. Gary Loomis mentioned that the first year he offered finished rods for sale, all the casting models featured a spiral wrap. He said that there were no disadvantages, except that fishermen were slow to accept them and thus sales were not what they had hoped. He went to the standard guides-on-top style after that and sales went up.

But, guides belong on the bottom of the rod, period. If you want to convince yourself or your customers of this, you need only arm yourself with a vertical spine finder and two rods - one with guides-on-top and one with the spiral wrap. Put a reel on both and string them up. Set the butt on the vertical spine finder and put a slight load on the line - pull on it to the tune of maybe 1 or 2 pounds of pressure. Have any doubters try to right the reel on the guides on top set-up, or disrupt the reel position on the spiral wrapped version. This is the very most effective demonstration you can make live and in person. You needn't say a work, the rods will do the talking.

This is usually all it takes to convince even the most stalwart guides-on-top proponents that having the guides on the bottom of the rod creates a rod that is inherently stable while pointing out that the guides-on-top rod is a very cumbersome affair that really doesn't want to anything but flip, twist and torque under load.

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I've built several spiral wraps and everyone I have built one for loves it. The only negative I have heard has been the strange look and one customer said it took him some time to get used to putting it in his rod locker without hanging the guides.

One of my customers recently broke down and tried my personal spiral wrap fora weekend. Upon his return from his trip he has now ordered 6 rods to replace his six favorites. He wants the same action and lengths but wants them done in the spiral wrap.

Hey all,
Before I started my fasination for building rods I bought a Spiral Wrap from Bud Erhardt Fishing Sticks. It was the first one I have seen so I had to have it. I think I was like 20 years old. i was not about to take a back seat to change as change is good and done for reason. The only problem I had was getting used to looking at the guides under the blank. Now I am 31 and still have the rod and I plan to build several for myself to promote the wrap.
Mark

Over the years I have written several articles for local papers and fishing magazines. The only one that has ever been turned down was the one I wrote on a spiral wrapped inshore trolling rod. The editor who otherwise appears to be a knowledgable guy in regard to the sport didn't feel that there would be sufficient interest among his readers. I was going to offer him the opportunity to use one of my rods for a couple of weeks but changed my mind when that weeks magazine showed up in my mail with a six page article on useful things you can make for a fishing boat out of old five gallon plastic buckets.

Would those be the new spiral injection molded buckets or the old linear type?...pros and cons?

Made one for myself and can't say anything bad about it. I am using a 13' float rod for steelhead in the Great Lakes and haven't had any problems with the line stacking up at the first guide or the rod twisting or torquing. My only problem was I used the wrong guides (not high enough off the blank).

Can someone please e-mail a picture of a spiral wrapped rod. I have never seenone!
Thanx,
~Don~

Don,

Go to my web site: www.dohertycustomrods.com Click on the page for "Spiral Guide Wrap" under Site Menu.

Bill Doherty

Out west I have not had a customer that I did the" Don Morton Demo" even refuse to try one. I educate them first with a demo using the verticle spine finder and showing them how miserable theirs failed. I then explain the use of equal angle guide placement and its advantages. Use a factory Loomis for the comparison. I then take them outside and let them cast the rods. I have yet to build a conventional style casting rod in the last two years. I also have several demos that I let them take fishing first if they are serious about purchasing a custom rod. It works for me anyway. I now consider it fun to convert a die hard bass fisherman to change over. The demo nails them every time. The spiral wrap works even better for the trolling rods I build for trout and striper fishing. You will find all kinds of applications where it excells.

Give it a try!

Bruce Young
Landing Gear

I have a spiral wrap ice fishing rod and love it. But I'm hesitant to try it due to concerns about casting distance. I can't say I've read a lot about this yet, but for those in this discussion, does casting distance suffer at all?

Only problem I ever had was stopping a deck hand from straightening the "crooked" guide!

The only thing in can think of as a con is it take me longer time to line up the spiral compared to all on top. love my spiral wrap rods.

No, there is no measurable loss of casting distance on a well implemented spiral wrapped rod.

I was unaware that ice fishing rods were "cast."

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