As some of you know by now, I'm a real fan of single-foot fly rod guides with ceramic rings (SFC), especially American Tackle's Titan guides. While static testing a few rods recently it occurred to me that snake guides and wire single foots (feet?) allow much more rod slap than SFCs. Think back cast: snakes do nothing to keep the line off the blank, single foots are really no improvement. SFCs hold the line off the blank on both the back cast and the forward cast. They standoff holds the line away from the blank and keeps it entirely encircled ; none of the line directly contacts the blank at the guide position and between the guides of the static placement is right.

Jim

Some of my preference for single foot ceramics is the fact that they do allow shooting line on the back cast with light lines and little line out. I tried both snakes and single foots on the same blank and the line shooting on the backcast was markedly different.

In the last several months, I thought I had read of at least one RBO fellow who was using the Fuji Concept Y-frame guides (CYAG or BYAG) on his FLY rod, forward of his stripper guide. I lost track of the author or the exact phrasing, so it may take a wider Search on your part to find out who it was and how he liked it. -Cliff Hall+++ Merry Christmas

I have used similiar guides in titanium frames for the stripper and next guide. The higher guides allow the line to flow in a more direct line from the reel through the first couple of guides, without using a ring bigger than a 12. You can switch to the shorter single foot guides further down the blank.