Chris,

Don't sell yourself short! A good question, posed correctly, (especially about rod guides)
gets lots of attention and many responces. Many builders read these and gain from it so,
you not only helped yourself but many others as well!

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

Chris,

I bet you will enjoy both your rods.


Scott,

I agree with you that any manufacturer is cost conscious in business....but I don't necessarily think this is the case here.

Many of the high end commercial rod companies invest quite a bit of money developing and marketing their own blanks and equip them with expensive components...nickel silver reelseats with high grade stabilized wood inserts...quality cork etc. You have to spend money to make money. The consumer buying a 700.00 rod doesn't flinch at 710.00 if they feel like they are getting something extra....but that is where IMO there is a question.

You claim that the ceramic guides can improve your cast 5-10 % at 60 ft that is 3 or 6 ft xtra but most people I know fish within 30 to 40 feet....which would only gain them a couple feet...which they can easily make up anyway by just casting a few feet farther.

When fighting a fish there might be more friction...but then again you could just set your drag 1 click lighter and accomplish the same thing.

I can see how for example a steelheader with a 13ft rod might benefit from ceramics more than your avg flychucker but I'm not sure for 9ft and under.

I can get a new dodge charger with a hemi....but none of the roads I drve on have a 150 mph speed limit so why bother....IMO this is the same thing

I'm not saying ceramics might not do the job better....I just think in most cases for most people they won't utilize what they would gain by going there not to mention the extra cost.

One thing you did not address is that in fact the labor costs for a manufacturer and the number of rods that could be wrapped in a day would be quite a cost saving to the manufacturer....only having to complete one wrap per guide which could offset much of the cost of the more expensive guides.
Especially if they are manuafcturing their rods in N America.

You're correct Joe-- like I said, there's very little to be gained by the 'average joe' if a major manufacturer switches to ceramics. Most guys fishing for trout cast 20-50', like you said...I personally will argue that ceramics are smoother even at that distance, but for the vast majority of folks, snakes do fine. On the other hand, I will be spending most of the upcoming summer chasing summer steelhead in large rivers with swung flies. This often requires 60'+ casts...and sometimes 100'+ (!)...repeated several hundred times through the course of the day. For that application, I wouldn't even look twice at snake guides.

What I was trying to get at (and may not have done a great job with) is that there's no benefit for the manufacturer to go to ceramics when the general public doesn't know much about them...stick with what is working.

Ceramic guides are a performance upgrade rather than a more easily perceived aesthetic one like you mention with grips, reelseats, etc. Not as easy for that 'average joe' to notice.

I think you might be surprised, too, at the actual materials cost of your $700 rods...if the company doesn't outsource reelseats (which is fairly common, I'll admit), their materials per rod cost is something along the lines of $30 ($5 reelseat, $3 grip, $5 guides, $2 thread/wc/hookkeeper, $15 blank, you'd be amazed how cheap the raw materials are for these things)...



Scott Kinney
The Longest Cast Fly Rods
[www.thelongestcast.com]

Chris,

is the problem with forward cast and not with back cast?
In case the forward cast is the problem, you've just noticed that fly rod guides are low -> when the rod bends so that the guides are on the outside bend, the line will touch the blank even if your guides are correctly placed (unless you've using many reasonbly high guides ie. ceramics, but heavy bend will do it anyway). If you turn/rotate the rod so that when casting the guides point to the side you'll reduce the friction since you'll minimize blank contact - I do this while casting far in fishing situations. With 4-pc rod distance practicing I sometimes turn the top three sections so that all the guides are 90 degrees to reel direction.

Cheers,