Hi Chaps

Greetings from across the pond - it's been a while.

I am interesting in building an interline rod and would like your help re. guide choice. That is to say are any special characteristics needed for the blank apart from it being hollow?
As a travelling angler some of the larger guide sizes used (30/40 mm) are a pain in the butt in rodtubes. Also if damaged $50 plus for a replacement (UK prices) makes carrying spares costly. Also steel guide frames and carbon blanks aren't the best of travelling companions in a rod tube - even if well padded.
I've noticed that most interline rods use a low profile almost 'low rider' style guide for the 'butt' ring.
So am I missing something obvious - eg are the inside of the rod blanks lined in some way?

Help please.
thanks
Jeremy

The inside of those Interlines were ceramic lined, with a spiral in it. They didn't work as well in th real fishing world as thought. I would say making one would be pretty difficult. The "butt guide" was a ceramic line entry port to the hole in the blank. Would also be tough to open out a blank without drastically compromising its structure and integrity.

The original blanks I think were made by laying up the carbon pre-preg flags over the core, then baking them together.

As a suggestion would Fuji's Folding guides be a better option than an Interline rod .They go from 20mm-40mm.

The Fuji Lowrider System is their answer to the Interline rods. Both Shimano and Daiwa designed their reels with a 4 degree upsweep to make the intersection point at 120 cm on these rods.

Fuji made their butt guide at guess what?; 120 cm. They also turned the butt guide around.

The Interline rods also have a funny lookig first(and only) guide. It has to make the line bend to enter the rod.

I've had some interesting experiences involving the little wire needed to thread the line through the rod. I don't dare repeating them because the boo birds and nay sayers jumped all over me. C2

.

I build sabiki rods for catching bait and they sort of work but the two problems are the entry point and the Fuji lowrider does help, and the second problem is that the tips are made of softer plastic and they groove out in no time.

I have two Diawa interline surf rods, both 2-pc (9' and 11').

I use them both with AG5500-sized reels. The "stripper" guide works perfectly to funnel the line into the rod/

It's a little more trouble to run the "little wire" down the rod and drag the line through but I've found that, using proper drag settings, I haven't had a single instance where the line popped back into the rod. I did lose one of the threader wires, though, but was able to make a substitute using 60# leader wire. Cleaning them out consists of taking the plug out of the base of the upper section and running freshwater through it. My casting distance is about 2%-3% shorter and I think it's because of the bend the line has to make coming off the reel into the hole. I can improve that situation by using lighter line.

I do not use these for spinning setups. I don't think that's what they were intended for, although that's just my guess. The stripper guide/tunnel design actually significantly chokes the line coming off a spinning reel and substituting a larger stripper does no good in practical terms.

I like these rods a lot. They have landed a bunch of nice fish for me in the surf.

Uncle Russ
Calico Creek Rods