I know there have been many posts regarding guide placements and from what I understand if you truly want to build a custom rod for your individual needs you cannot really go with a generic positioning of guides based on some chart. I wish to get some starting reference point though.

I will be ordeing a 6' UL, moderate action, 1 piece, 2-4 line wt., 1/16-1/4 lure wt. rod with a .309 butt and 4.0 tip. It will be used for blue gills / crappie, with an UL spinning reel.

My question is what should be the measurement of the first guide [the one that strips off the line, the one closest to the reel]. Also, I will be using the New Concept Guide System and it will be my first rod.

Read the Guide placement article in the library for this site. Just click on the button above.

It should fall about 21" give or take a few depending the placement of the 1st small (choke) guide.

Stan Grace
Helena, MT
"Our best is none too good"

James,

The positioning of that 'first' guide, the one closest to the reel, is based mostly on the REEL you choose, where you put the REEL SEAT, and the SIZE of the guide (should also be based on the REEL-ideally you want one where the opening is at least 50% of the diameter of the reel spool). So, there is no 'starting point' if you want some kind of measurement in inches.

You want a straight line path from the reel face to the intersect point. This point is based on the ANGLE of the reel foot and where the REEL SEAT is placed on the blank. So, when you draw that imaginary line, or use a table edge, etc., the guide is MOVED along the blank until it is in alignment.

As Jim noted, it's explained quite simply in the library here. AND, it works great.

Good Luck!

Buddy

Hey thank alot, guess I'll go to the library.

On Spinning and Fly rods it will fall approx 26-28" from the front of the reel seat. (Casting rods 21-23") This is more a general proportional measurment and can be affected by the guides used and the reel itself. But as mentioned above read the concept guide artical. This distance can change as per the reel and its particular upsweep (Angle between the plane of the reel foot and the centerline of the reel body) I find that most production rods use this 26-28" proportional measurment but then the MFG intelligencia use a regular low frame 1st guide when a high frame guide (Such as used in concept guiding and Kirkman's Rodmaker artical) is much more in alignement with where the centerline of the reel body is pointing at approximatly this proportional distance.

One must also consider that line coming off the reel spool expands and/or pillows off the spool, and this expansion happens more towards the the last half of the cast when the line is lower on the spool arbhor and has to climb over the gradually heightening spool lip. To accomidate this occurance there needs to be a certain amount of distance to allow things to lift and flow off smoothly, expand/plillow, then be gathered in efficently so to and not impede the process with undesirable friction. Smaller dia. reel spools (on smaller reels) would require a shorter distance to pull this off.

I have also seen extremes in either the near or far court; as close a 15" which impedes pillowing of the line and corresponding friction besides looking just funny as most rods one has ever seen have the proportions indicated above. Conversly, 1st guides as far away as 30-some inches, sometimes the only guide on the butt section of a rod 8'-6" to 11'-6". This is where "I" would want at least three guides to fight the fish with and distribute the load over a greater blank area. Plus having a guide so far away often leads to a guide directly on the ferrule and just up from the ferrule between where the butt section ends with in the tip section when mated, and the placement of the next tip section guide away from the ferrule (1st or 2nd tip section guide depending on weather or not there is a guide directly on the ferrule) is where lots and lots of blanks fail. One guide on the butt, one directly on the ferrule and the 2nd tip section guide spaced well up from the 1st tip section guide in an effort to lighten the load with fewer guides, makes a rod suseptable to this "ferrule forward stress point" as this particular guide spacing has increased the leverage over it. Most MFG's reinforce the ferrule area but where the tip section tapers back down after the reinforcing and the next tip section guide is often a leveraged stress point and is subject to failure, but knowing this one can try and engineer around this inheriantly undesirable happenstance. Avoiding "High Sticking" helps a lot also.