What do you look for when test casting to determine guide placement? When I move the first guide up or down on a spinning rod I don't seem to be able to tell any difference in the casting. I ended up with the first guide, a 25, at 21" from the reel face and I don't see any rod slap with the line. Should I be checking for other things as the distance or what? I used 6 guides plus tip on a 7' rod. TIA and I caught 7 fish on my first trip using my new rod.

Distance (if practical), smoothness , line slap, quietness.

Really, it's your rod so test for what ever perameters matter to YOU.

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

Seven foot rod = seven fish.... Wonder how long a fishing rod I can make? LOL . Guide placement is related to guide diameter which is related to the 'action' and 'power' of the blank (and I've had guide placement vary - although not much - on the same blank from the same manufacturer) IMO if you consider the spine/spline as a "enhancement" to performance and do a good static distribution test - test casting is virtually irrelevent.

Dave,
I think that you are trying to accomplish two things when you position the guides on a rod. First you are distributing the stress on the rod and I think that the static positioning method does this well. Second you want to place the guides so that the line flows as smoothly through the guides as possible with the minimum of friction and loss of momentum. The static positioning will not tell you everything that you want to know about this and so many people will test cast the rod. But first I would just sight through the guides from the reel to the tip to see that everything is lined up. When test casting the two places where you are most likely to run into friction between the line and the guides is at the first guide and also at the tip top. If you will carefully watch the line as it passes through the guides when test casting you will see a standing wave in the line if there is friction between the line and the guide. If the guides, particularly the first guide, are not positioned properly this standing wave or the line trying to pile up or trying to move at 90 degrees from the direction that it should be moving is fairly obvious. Adjusting the position of the first guide, most often moving it farther from the reel, should result in most of this standing wave going away. The standing wave at the tip or at any other point on the rod is more subtle but if you will watch the line carefully during test casting you should be able to see if the line is not moving smoothly through the guides and creating a small standing wave in the line.
With a spinning rod, because of the way that the line is coming off of the reel, it is more difficult to see this standing wave than with a casting reel but if you experiment a little with the guide positioning, especially the first guide, while test casting I think that you will see what I am referring to. Hope that this helps.
By the way, what is referred to as line slap, where the line is hitting the blank, is just the result of a large standing wave in the line.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2006 12:21PM by Emory Harry.