I spent about four hours assembling a rod wrapped in the bumper guide configuration on July 5. It is built on one of andy's cheaper than dirt 844's, a cutout reel seat, and eight aluminum oxide guides. Three double foots and five single foot fly guides.

I fished the rod this past Thursday in Aransas Bay at Rockport and it fished very well. It does not cast any better than the other O'Quin or Fordam spirals that I have built and fished, but it does cast equallly as good. Just old fashioned I guess but it still seems to me that a properly set up rod with the guides on top casts the best. The beauty of any spiral is when you have a fish on. No rod twist. The fish were on the small size, however was able to give the rod a good workout on lots of small specs and the usual sandy water trash fish.

I expect all casting rods with the running guides on the bottom that i build in the future will be of the bumper guide type.

Later,
Gerald Mc

IMHO any spiral rod should use the line and the blank and reel, to show the best path and placement for the guides.
Weather it comes out to be a Bumper, O Quinn or any thing else makes no difference
Just my 1 1/2 cents

Gerald - I built a bumper Rainshadow IMB843 last week for a tourney bass fisherman. I used all the stuff to cut weight - no foregrip, split rear, cut the blank exposed reel seat down, no butt wrap and used the Alconite guides. He fished the thing three days and came back and ordered four more for his set. The only thing he nixed was the hole in the trigger for a hook keeper - got stuck two times picking the thing up. The Rainshadow is a little heavy to start with but his comment on the package was "boy this thing is light". I am staying with the lower modulus blanks due to breakage issues with the "higher quality" blanks.

Glad to see you are out on the water! We are on the bank for the next few days due to the storm. If you have a contact line with Andy ask him if he got the cork order I emailed. No response from him on three email addresses.

Gon Fishn

Bill

The 844 that I built is probably heavier than the skined down 843 that you built. It did have split grips, full reel seat , a short foregrip, and a butt wrap ( about 1/2 inch ) but still felt pretty light.

Sure wish there was some way you Cajun folk could send us some of that rain that you are about to receive. Man it is hot and dry. It was so hot this trip, that i don't think I will make another trip this month or in August. Plus Vibrio has reared it's ugly twice recently in the Rockport area. Bad bad stuff.

Later,
Gerald Mc

Bill - tell your customer to hook teh hookeeper hole in the trigger "inside out", this way teh hook point isn't where your finger grabs teh trigger, it's on teh other side. THat make sense?

Bill,
I only received one of your emails, and responded to it tonight...did you not get it? Oddly enough, I only have 2 email addresses, not three, so I don't know where you sent the 3rd email?

Andy