I have decided to make myself a Dan Craft Signature V 966-4 using Hopkins and Holloway Single leg wire guides. It is the first rod I have built since I was a teenager! (30 Years). What I am struggling with is what size tip and intermediates do I use for a 6 weight. I will be doing much of my fishing on UK stillwaters, so will be using a WF floater for most of my fishing.

Any recommendations pse?

Mark

There are plenty of charts that you can follow & many of the major suppliers (at left) and rod manufacturers have guide /spacing charts. Your tip size will be published on the Dan Craft site. As for guides...wire would work just fine, but you might want to consider ceramic guides of some sort. Their price is pretty much a non-issue and they are superior to wire in almost all aspects.

Tight Lines,

Tim

"H&H" = Hopkins & Holloway. Their H&H "619-ALS" FLY Guides, "stand-out" Single-Foot, Single-Leg Wire-Ring FLY Guides (the 619-ALS) are very nice, and come in four different colors: [www.hopkinsholloway.co.uk]

Jan-Ole Willers <[email protected]> of the Baltic Sea, Germany is currently working with the H&H 619-ALS Fly Guides for a 9-foot, 9-weight FLY rod. He may have some useful first-hand information for you if you can e-mail him.

Also, if you have the Anglers Resource 2004-2005 Product Catalog, you can find a Snake Guide Size & Dimensions Chart on Page 22. This makes it easier to convert from Snake Sizes to Ring Sizes when consulting a prescribed guide layout for a fly rod from someone else's Fly Rod Table(s). There is no exact conversion, anyway, so some approximation is inevitable. You have to decide for yourself if the dominant discriminator is the free-open ring diameter, or the ring's height off the rod blank. Cheers, -Cliff Hall+++, FL-USA.

Mark,

I'll also recommend that you step up to the performanc of a ceramic insert guide. They are superior to wire in all measurable areas.

Skip the guide charts as to both size and spacing. No benefit to 'tapering' guide sizes on a fly rod. Think a rifle barrel rather than a funnel. You want to tame the lines oscillations as quickly as posible and get the line into the running guides quickly. The static guide distribution method described in the library here is the best way to space the guides on any rod, and it's easy.

As for guide size for a freshwater 6 wt., in the ceramics you won't need anything above a size 6 for the running guides. For the line taming set, a 10 followed by two 8s will be plenty, then the 6s on out.

If you want to stick with the outdated wire guides, use the smallest ones you can find for the running guides. They'll be plenty big for a 6 weight.

The rule I try to follow is to always use the smallest guides that will pass the required connections. This will give you lightest possible rod and the best performance from the blank.

Good luck!

Buddy

Hopkins & Holloway, Double-Foot, Single-wire SNAKE FLY Guides:
from the 2004-2005 Anglers Resource Product Catalog, Page 22.
Snake Guide Sizes & Dimensions Chart.

SIZE ... DIAMETER (MM) ... HEIGHT (MM) ... LENGTH (MM) ...
2/0 ... 5.4MM ... 6mm ... 6.0 ... 19.0 ...
1/0 ... 6.2MM ... 7mm ... 6.5 ... 20.0 ...
1 ... 7.2MM ... 7.5mm ... 7.5 ... 21.0 ...
2 ... 7.7MM ... 8mm ... 8.5 ... 22.0 ...
3 ... 8.2MM ... 8.5mm ... 9.4 ... 23.0 ...
4 ... 9.0MM ... 9mm ... 10.3 ... 27.0 ...
5 ... 9.7MM ... 10mm ... 11.7 ... 29.0 ...
6 ... 11.0MM ... 12mm ... 13.0 ... 30.0 ...

Conversion from Snake Size Diameter (MM) to CERAMIC RING Size Diameter (mm) is subject to interpretation.

This information makes it easier to convert from Snake Sizes to Ring Sizes when consulting a prescribed guide layout for a fly rod from someone else's Fly Rod Table(s). There is no exact conversion, anyway, so some approximation is inevitable. You have to decide for yourself if the dominant discriminator is the free-open ring diameter, or the ring's height off the rod blank. -Cliff Hall+++, FL-USA

Guys

Thanks for all the observations. I am afraid that I cannot get used to the idea of ceramics on a 6 weight trout rod. I must admit that my experience of ceramics is that they do not shoot as well as snakes, but that was with some old fujis many years ago. Looks to me like I should be using the majority of guides as size 1 or 1/0.

Thanks. Any more observations, I am soaking up this info as this is a new game to me - who knows, I may build alot more

Mark

Oh, by the way Dan Craft hasn't got his site up and running yet. I for one am looking forward to when he does

Fighting tradition, eh? I found myself in the same baot a little while back, except I used ceramics and the blank was not a Sig V. I used a 2003 Forecast, and while it cast fine, there were a few problems. Having put it into the hands of an experienced fluff chucker, the consensus was that it cast well, but a lot of the loading was coming from the ceramics, and the blank wasn't recovering fast enough. I don't think your blank would suffer from this at all.

I find myself rewrapping the rod with wires (actually snakes) for another reason you may not be facing though. It will be used for estuary light tackle flyfishing, and also open water Pacific tarpon. The snakes were also recommended for ease in clearing any knots/loops in the flyline as a fish rockets off after feeling steel. I believe several people have mentioned that in such a situation turning your rod upside down helps a great deal to let the loops/knots pass through.

Hi Mark,

Cliff is right, I am about to use the H&H stand out snakes for my upcoming project. Most probably I will use teh titanium coated ones, but also the other versions should do their job fairly good. What I have observed with a rod of a friend of mine that the coating for these guides i sa very sensitive issue - at least if it comes to the titanium covered ones with a bit too much coating where teh (salt)water finds some rest... So he has on two of the guides in teh area where the guide leaves the coating some signs of rust/oxydation. I hope that this belongs to th epast and that the current versions are okay in regard of the titanium coating at the surface.

If you have further questions send me a mail, address as shown above.

Ceramics: I think what Ted morgan wrote is true - a fly rod completely with ceramics might load up to a certain part through the heavier guides. This is the reason why I will go with the stand out snakes in the middle, two ceramic strippers and a ceramic tip top. From my point of view just some very stiff rods might be suitable according to my taste to be fully equipped with ceramics. I assume that the most friction is on the tio top, thats why I will go for a ceramic tip top.

Regards from Hamburg,
Ole

Mark. I think you are well past the "break even" point for ceramics versus single foots with a six weight. The H & H stand up single foots are nice guides, but I would use all ceramics for much improved performance. Titanium frames if you are that worried about weight. A #1 would be the smallest size I would use in a wire guide. Don