I just received the April/May issue of SaltWater Fly Fishing magazine. On the inside of the front cover is an ad for Under Armour clothing. There is a fellow holding a fly rod and if you look closely you will see that the stripper and tamer guides are placed at 90 degrees rather than at the 180 degree position. Now that makes sense to me in that the line going out will not have a sharp angle from your stripping hand out to the guides. I would be willing to bet that the rod the fellow is holding is a custom made rod. I will try that set up on my next fly rod and see how it works. Has anybody else seen the ad or tried that guide placement on a fly rod?

Ellis you will probably find out that the magazine used a model who had never fished and he put the rod together wrong for the photo. Kinda like George Bush holding a spinning rod with reel on top for a shoot of his Sunday trip before the election! Wonders never cease.

I'm with Bill - don't put too much credence in what the model holding the rod is doing. He may not have ever held a fishing rod before.

..............

Quantum now makes a factory bumper wrap, split grip rod. I think what you now think is innovative may be industry std. in the not too long future.

I would agree except that he is holding the rod correctly and the rest of the guides are on the 180 degree point or on the bottom of the rod.

Ellis, You could tape some guides on and see how it casts. I see the problem when your hooked up. Do you turn your reel seat also. after many years of fly fishing a guide finally told me I was stripping line all wrong. Hand to far out and down. I was pulling my line off my reel at a angle. The real effect was my fly lines were wearing out prematurely and also causing wear on the lower corner of my reel after much use. Now, after alot of practice I have fixed my casting flaw. My Lines are lasting longer (happy wife) and Im casting further with more accuracy (happy me).
In L.A. Garcia's book, He says you can turn the stripper a little off angle for your stripping hand. But We are custom builders and if we dont push the envelope......

p.s. the guide was a new friend at the time and I was not cheating on my fishing buddys.

Robert Knox
Whitefish, Mt.

Good idea. I will tape a couple of guides on a rod and see what difference I can detect if at all.

I read that Lefty advises a 30deg offset on the first stripper, then recovering 10deg each on the second and third. I was going to build that way, because it makes a lot of sense, and the offset wont matter that much to the fish fighting scenario, if you are using a 25mm stripper. But then I remembered that I was teaching myself to cast with either hand...

The line still contacts the ring in only one spot. So offsetting the guides like that doesn't actually do anything for you or your casting. It does not improve line flow in any way and can cause guide shift problems when fighting large fish.

....................

I made a post earlier about Castaway. They have marketed a bumper wrap, high dollar, high quality bass rod. This is their first attempt at spiral rod marketing. When I picked it up and took a peep it was evident that they had not read ALL the instructions for the bumper. Conventional spacing for guides on top with the second guide rotated 90. Cris Williams smiled when it was pointed out that the bumper was supposed to be at the 1/2 way point between one and two. He was headed immediately back to the drawing board.