Last night i was trying to get my guides in the right spot along the blank so that i can do some test casting. After all was said and done, i think that i might have a problem, but i wanted to get your thoughts.

i'm building a 8'6" spinning rod using the New Concept system that is written about in the Library section. The blank is a 9' Forecast 7 weight fly rod blank, that was cut 2" in the tip, and 4" in the butt. I'm using a Tica Libra 3000 as my reel, and alconite single foot, hi-frame guides to the intersecting point, and then lo-rider singles to the tip. When I was laying out the rod at my local tackle place, I thought that a pretty good set-up was BYAG 25 as the butt guide, and then BYAG 20, 16, 12, 10, 8, and finally the intersecting guide to the tip are all 7s.

Now, as I was laying out the guides last night, I'm finding that trying to use all of these guides (the 25 thru the 8) is just too many, and I was leaving out the 8. However, the rest of the guides are kind of close, but they fall in line with the slope that i need based on the angle of the spool shaft from my reel. For instance, the spacing of my tip guides to the intersection guide is about 5 1/8" between each guide, with the last two being about 5 5/16" and then 5 1/2". Then between my intersection guide and my first hi-frame guide, the spacing drops to about 4" to the size 10 guide, and about 4 1/8" between the 10 and the 12. After that, it seems to space out okay. My butt guide ends up being about 24 1/2" out from my reel.

I did a static distribution test last night, and the tip looks great, and even the mid and butt areas look okay, but the spacing is just not aesthetically pleasing, not that I really mind. However, I'm thinking that I might be able to bend some of the guides a bit to shallow their angle, which will still keep my on the slope line from the reel to the intersection guide, and also allow me to remove another guide. Does this sound plausible?

Thanks.

You can probably do that, or you can mix and match some other guide styles to get the require straight line path (I'm assuming you check for that as mentioned in the article). You may have to work in a standard LVSG in place of something else in there. As long as the frame color is the same, you won't notice it.

I don't have your rod here in front of me, but your standard guide sizing as listed here just doesn't sound like it could be right. It would be rare indeed, that you could use all the supplied sizes and have a straight line path.

Do this, just to humor me, sight down through the butt guide to the intersect guide. Where do all the other rings fall? Is each one perfectly framed by the one preceeding it? Or do they appear some high, some low, some centered? What you should see is something that looks like an archery target - with each ring perfectly centered in the one preceeding it.

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It is also a bit easyer if you take the spool off and use the shaft that holds it as the center line