I'm building a St. Croix 2M79XXXHF for tuna jigging and want to use a spiral wrap. What are your opinions on the strongest spiral method? I don't need casting performance from this rod, I need the fish fighting benefits of a spiral that'll stand up to 20+lbs of drag day in / day out.

Align your guides so that most of the time, there is no side force on any of the guides.
Then you will be fine.

I find that the 5, 60, 120, 180, 190, etc. work best for me.

When I use the 0, 90, 180, I find that I am getting line rubbing on the sides of one or more of the first guides.
Align, load the rod, check, realign, load the rod, recheck etc. Continue until you have a rod when loaded does not put any side strsses on the guides.

Take care
Roger

John the idea about spiral wraps is to get the line to the bottom of the rod as soon as possible. There are about half a dozen different ways to do spiral wraps, if your not worried about casting then 0, 90, 180, then all on bottom to tip. This will also work well if you are casting.
I have built spirals from little light weight bait casters to cod jiggers and have tried all the different ways of wrapping them, when it comes to heavy jiggers I have found that 0, 90, 180 is the best.

Roger, I am not real sure what you mean by "line rubbing on the sides" of one or more guides.

Some of the ways of spiral wraps are not as smooth looking as others, but any way you set up your spiral if the line travels on the side of the guide does not mean there is side stress on that guide.

Hopefully, Mark from @#$%& will chime in, he has done a ton of spirals, if he doesn't go to @#$%& and check out the description of the acid wrap he has on his web site.

One last thing do a search here, click all dates, and you should get a lot of reading about spiral wraps.

With the Simple Spiral, you do not have any transition guides so there is never any side loading of the guides that could cause any guide or guides to move or shift in their wraps. However, I doubt this is much of a concern really, as many heavy boat and pier rods have been built with all manner of spiral wraps and few ever have any problems along those lines.

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Tom,

I've tried a 0, 60, 120, 180 on a 20lb bait rod and was pleased with the results. On a heavier rod, side loading is my concern using this method. I was also concerned that the line could load the bumper guide on a simple spiral if the rod was under heavy load and the action sufficiently parabolic.

From your comments it seems that there hasn't been much of an issue with bumper or transition guides on heavy rods, regardless of method.

Tim,

I think I've read about everything there is on spiral rods including here and in RodMaker (still have much to learn). My question about this rod in was if someone had a favorite (or least favorite) spiral method for heavy loads, specifically in regards to strength.


Thanks for the responses everyone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2008 10:20AM by John Lomax.

The guides and thread wrapped on the blank can withstand more than you or the reel can ever exert. I have an oversized sturgeon rod ( fish over over 6 ft long) that is used in heavy current flows on the Columbia River that is wrapped with the same guides used on steelhead and bass rods well over 15 years now use with no problems. Before that it was my Florida/Caribbean trolling rod when chasing druggies, I bet a saltwater guide could withstand over 100 lbs of load easy, same for the wrap. Most damage is done by the user not the fish.

No, if you heed the placement instructions for the Bumper guide on the Simple Spiral and heavy duty offshore type rods, you won't have any side loading there. Make sure you don't put the first two guides too far apart - generally any more than 10 to 11 inches is too much. The Bumper then goes between those two and on a slow or heavy power rod intended to flex deeply into the butt you'd put the Bumper at from 100 to 110 degrees per the article instructions. A little larger ring, with the frame reshaped/bent a little to keep it lower to the blank, is also worth trying here.

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Have a couple of simple spirals we use for sharks and fixing to build a third. NO PROBLEMS and they have been run through the mil.

Regards......Doug@
TCRds

Just dovetailing on Tom's last comment, don't get stuck on placing the bumper at 90 degrees half way between the stripper and first 180. If you set all of your guides up w/o the bumper, draw a line down the 90 degree axis and load the rod, you'll see that the line crosses the 90 degree line closer to the stripper under load, where it will cross it half way between the guides when "unloaded'".

Placing the bumper at the half way mark (under load) is going to scoot it down another 15-20 degrees to keep the line path straight, which is what you're after in your application. i've also placed bumpers at 90 degrees under load, just closer to the stripper (where the line crosses the 90 degree line under load). I've had no issues either way with big fish.

Mark Griffin
[]
C&M Custom Tackle
San Dimas, California

What Mark just conveyed to you was in the article. I assumed you have it, but if not you should be able to piece it together from this information. If you have more questions, just ask.

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Tom and Mark,

I do have the article describing the simple spiral. I had also planned on checking whether 90deg or something greater was needed for the bumper guide. My working assumption was this would be the best approach for my application, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something particular to heavy rods (would've been a shame to get poor performance from a simple oversight).

Thanks again for the detailed responses. I'll be sure and let ya'll know how it turns out.

A few notes on how to apply it to heavy power rods can be found near the end of the article.

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