Guide questions; what would we do without 'em!

Many fishers are now using wide arbor fly reels that are somewhat oversize, e.g., the Orvis Battenkill. The line leaves the reel at quite a different angle than it left the old 3-inch reels. Tom mentions in his book about not sticking with tradition with stripper guides ("If it ain't broke, fix it!") It seem to me that the height should be changed, or even more, than the guide sizes should follow the Fuji Concept concept. What do you think?

Jim

You should look at the " V " type casting guides. They are a higher type cast guide that brings the ring higher off the blank

Jim Benenson Wrote:
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> Guide questions; what would we do without 'em!
>
> Many fishers are now using wide arbor fly reels
> that are somewhat oversize, e.g., the Orvis
> Battenkill. The line leaves the reel at quite a
> different angle than it left the old 3-inch reels.
> Tom mentions in his book about not sticking with
> tradition with stripper guides ("If it ain't
> broke, fix it!") It seem to me that the height
> should be changed, or even more, than the guide
> sizes should follow the Fuji Concept concept.
> What do you think?
>
> Jim

Well, I'm experiementing with this myself. So far I've gotten some guides that sit higher than the standard H&H stippers I've been using. There are a couple of thoughts that have crossed my mind...

1) The height of the guide when casting this won't really affect things too much as the line is either on the water or in a stripping basket, and not parallel to the rod.

2) Putting a higher guide on may allow you to change the static deflection of the rod, by allowing you the luxury of moving the stripping guide forward, and potentially reducing the number of guides. This leads to a question on how far forward it is too far forward, and I certainly haven't figured it out

So in my mind, the proof will be in the pudding by building one out. I do know that the spey guys like RB Meisner use *very* different spacing on their guides, but the same kinds of guides.

If you find anything out via experimentaion, I'd love to hear. Conversely if I find out anything interesting doing what I'm doing, I'll post it back here :)

I find having higher rings makes very little difference to line flow and in fact can create their own problems, particularly susceptability to damage, due to the extra stand off, fitting in a tube, extra weight, plus they look plain ugly! The distance from the reel to the first stripper with a fly reel set up, where the reel is positioned down the handle, does not see the line run through the stripper at an acute enough angle to bear much effect. It would be different with an up positioned fixed spool reel of course, such as with a carp set up. In the UK, the benefits of the "extreme" LA reel are still questionable! I chipped my Knuckles a couple of seasons ago from a spinning Batenkill LA iv, when a big double reservoir trout took a lot of line off, the handles protrude way too much. It was pretty painful and I lost the fish, as I was not able to handle the reel.
Needless to say the reel was ditched and now I stick with reels no more than 3.5 inches across.