Has anyone tried this with fly rods? What would you do?

I generally build 5wts and heavier with ceramics and lighter rods with single foot wires (like a lot of othes do). But I was thinking that it seems like we could get a huge benefit by putting ceramic guides on the lower 1/2 where there is more line slap, and wires on the tip half to keep it light. I think the middle line weights, 4-6, would benefit the most. What about at the tip, use a light wire top, or a ceramic because this is where the line has its largest angle change?

Most of the load falls on the guides nearest the butt. And the tip sees the greatest line angle. This is one of the reasons that fly rod companies, who must work on a budget, use ceramic stripping and #2 guides, and then snakes or wire for the rest. Saves money and keeps the hard ceramics where they expect the guides will see the majority of wear. Pity that they don't use a ceramic tiptop as well.

You can mix and match as you wish. Nothing wrong with your suggestion and you might try it to see how it works. Nice thing about custom rod building is that you can always reverse things if they don't work out as you had hoped.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2006 12:21PM by Tom Kirkman.

I use ceramics on the butt section and wire guides on the tip section of fly rods all the time. On short, light weight rods I use single foot ceramic for the stripper and second guide and either snakes or single foot wire for the rest. I also build rods with ceramics all the way from stripper to tiptop. I guess it just depends on the rod, what I want it to look like and what I want it to cast (feel) like. They all work.

I have started using the Line Tamer guide on all my fly rods and get a lot of positive feedback on that innovation.

Joe Douglas

Fly or Spin I run ceramics and then single foot wire fly guides on out to the tip. On a fly rod I will use ceramics on the butt section, if three guides are located on the butt section then I use three ceramics, to keep line slap down where the rod thickens at the ferrule, To me I don't see much sense in starting your single foot wire guide run just before the ferrule where the blank thickens, your just inviting line slap then and any extra weight gained from that thrid ceramic on the butt is much better than the friction caused by line slap.

On longer spin rods I run SF wire fly guides on the tip, if you run Tigold SF Wire guides ther e is less line contact on wire compared to ceramics, due to the smaller dia of the wire compared to the ceramic guide insert, and theTigold coating is bulletproof and slicker than ceramics plus its the lightest guide available when all the expert talk is about, Lightness lightness, lightness near the tip, no one suggest the lightest guide possible and that is a SF Wire guide. The surface area contact aspect alone, is a big advantage itself as this amounts to wet line slap friction and this lessens it