I was looking at some of my older (5-7 year old) St. Croix spinning rods, and noticed that the 6' models only had 5 guides. I have an UL and a Med-lite like this.

These rods work great. So I built a new one with the same lay out, and I love it. Does anyone else build like this still? It seems that I see so many rods that are starting to look overloaded with guides these days.

In most cases I put five guides on a rod. On a 6ft spin or casting rod from the tip the guides would be 5,6,7,8,9inches which would give you aprox 24" from the reel seat. A 6.5 rod would be 6,7,8,9,10 inches from the tip. A 7ft rod I will go to 6guides. Fugi says to use more guides, that is so they can sell more guides. Just use common sense, we are not building moon rockets. Jesse

Yes you will see rods with more guides on them, but what you have are smaller guides being used on the upper end of the rod, and you are adding less weight than what was done on the older rods. Even though there are more guides, you have a better performing rod. If you follow the new guide concept in the library you end up getting the line under control quicker, getting it to run straight through the guides and und up usually getting more casting distance.

Custom builders should strive to build the best rods possible, particularly if they're going to be selling them. What I'm about to tell you is just a general rule of thumb, but it comes very close to putting you right on the money on nearly any type of rod. Take the length of the rod in feet, then add one plus a tiptop and you'll be about right on most rod types. For instance, a 7 foot rod will require 8 guides plus a tiptop. Got it?

On rods that fall in between sizes, say a 7 and a half footer, you'd count it as an 8 footer and use 9 guides plus a tiptop.

You'd always want to do a check and make sure you need that many, or more, but generally this will put you in a very small ballpark.

I assume you have not been reading the series in recent RodMaker issues on sizing guides, determining the proper number of guides and how to locate them on your blank.

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Thanks Jesse! Great to get feedback from someone that does this for a living. The more I get comfortable with rod building, the more I am using this same common sense approach to all my techniques. The simpler the better.

Marc

Tom, you and I posted at the same time. I don't want it to look like I just rolled over what you said. I have been reading the guide articles in Rodmaker. My thought is if we combined the new smaller, lighter guides, with a guide lay out using fewer guides, would be the lightest possible.

Thanks,
Marc

Yes, but fewer guides results in more stress on the rod blank. There will be a high stress area directly between each pair of guides. If the distance between any pair of guides is too great, blank failure can result under heavy load. The closer the guide pairs are to each other, the less stress on that area will be.

Of course, you can use too many guides as well. They won't put your blank in jeopardy, but they will add unnecessary weight which can reduce overall performance.

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I realize that I do a pretty poor job at static testing and guide placement but since I build most of my rods for Salmon and Steelhead, I don't see a problem using an extra 6mm running guide on occasions (I believe those would be the extra ones Fuji is trying to sell us) to make sure the stress is properly distributed. I see a lot attention that talks about lightweight, casting distance, etc., but I don't see anyone ever talking about a rod's fishability. With an extra guide here and there I have no fear planting a rod horizontal and perpendicular to a Salmon and wearing it out (or me) so I can land it.

I prefer more than less. Commercial rod layouts are often ruled by economics (might not seem like it, but I would imagine the cost of applying a guide on many 1,000's of rods a year is considerable) and they obviously cannot take into consideration things such as type/style of fishing, reels, line, etc. I have seen people successfully fishing with rods with 4 guides on them but that doesn't mean that it's an optimum configuration. Simpler is not always better. I use as many guides as static testing shows me is needed for optimum efficiency. I use the smallest guides that I can which more than compensates for the number of guides. Just my opinion.

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

I'm in total agreement with Mike.

We agree with Mike. And then we take it beyond that - - -

As I've posted here before, we do our layouts one guide at a time, running line from the reel through the tip, and adding guides from the stripper, progressing toward the tip. We have a basic rule - the guide just before the tip should not be more than 3" from the tip. We frequently go to 3-1;4" or even 3-1/2", but never more than that.

We have built 7' rods that come close to Tom's formula - 9 guides including the tip - and we've done some with as many as 11 guides including the tip. One other thing we generally do is to use the largest guides we can (as opposed to some of the posts above) and in general, our tips are an 8-ring, our next one or two guides back are 8-rings, and then we go to 10 rings and up (working back toward the stripper). We do larger and smaller depending on our customer's requirements, but that's our general build.

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods

I've been doing bass and walleye rods using the library concept method. It works. Size 6 tip and fly guides work just fine for what I'm doing. I can't really see why you would want to go bigger on bass & walleye rods. Lately I have been experimenting with dropping down to flys sooner and using two M guides transitioning into a #6 fly. I can't tell any difference in casting and it ends up a little lighter and cheaper - but on a vertical jig rod I don't need to cast anyway so that's a moot point. I usually space the first guide from the tip at 4 to 5 " max, and the other 3, 4 or 5 fly guides usually end up at about 5" apart. I get great static test results and they really fish nice - no comparison to the 5 guide factory rods I used to use. I try to keep thread and finish to a minimum on the tip half of the rod.

When one of the guys on our Lake of the Woods fishing trip saw my rods he asked if all that fancy stuff would help me catch more fish.... Well, either it is pure luck or there is something to having a light, sensitive rod since I boated the most and the biggest walleyes out of a large group of people. After a week of jigging for walleyes I am quite happy with my setups. This is what works for me.

I generally follow the formula that Tom mentioned, especially when I'm building a rod for someone else. Having a rod break isn't good, regardless of the circumstance, but I'd really hate for it to be a customer's rod.

But, when I build for myself, I often use fewer guides than what I'd use for customer's rods. I find that the rod tends to cast just a little further with one or two fewer guides. I know that I'm running the risk of busting a rod, but since I build rods anyway, I just figure it's a good excuse for another build.

J Man you might get away with that few guides on a telephone pole - don't put 5 or six of those guides you use on top of an extra fast 82 inch high modulus drop shot blank unless you are going on a long vacation after delivery! But then I guess if you relabled one of the Uglies you could sleep well that night. Please admit to all that the type of blank, build style and components used have a lot to say about the correct number. We all want our "rocket ships" to at least be able to leave the ground - maybe not the moon -