Check out this photo - look at the line before and after the stripper. I believe Bill posted something previously, but this is a great angle.
[a.espncdn.com]

-----------------
AD

Nice one Alex! Whenever I see these photos I think we need the stripper closer to the reel. If I can ever get outside again I want to play with it. (This latest storm is bringing us 16 to 22 inches)

Now that is putting lipstick on those pig-tails LOL

Bill - willierods.com

Great shot

Here is another.

[www.hipocrocoduck.com]

Wow, nice shots!
At first look it does make me think I would want to smooth out that line before the butt guide as soon as reasonably possible. But, I am sure there are other things at work as to why not to put the but guide "too close". I am still learning. These sort of posts make me think of things I maybe wouldn't have otherwise. Kind of ruins the whole cone of flight thing.
Thanks.

You can't smooth out the line before the butt guide - that's what the butt guide does. The line will always leave the spinning reel spool in coils. A properly sized and placed butt guide will redirect the line from coils to straight. The subsequent guide after the butt guide finishes the job and from there the line should be totally free of such coils. This is why the NGC works so well - you don't need large ring guides past the first couple or so.

Another thing you want to remember, is that what the line looks like and where the lure goes do not always coincide. The final recipe for success (if overall casting efficiency and distance is your goal) is not what it looks like, but how far the lure travels.

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

This brings up a question that has bugged me for a while. There is a cap with a small hole only a few inches off the spool on any closed face reel and it doesn't interfere with the line spooling off the reel, so why do we use a large eye as a butt guide on an open face reel?

Because we don't have a solid cap on the front of a spinning reel to funnel the line into the first guide. The face cap on a spin cast reel serves a certain function.

And as said many times, the butt guide doesn't need a large ring necessarily. Often, the larger rings are used simply to obtain the height required. In other words, a #25 guide ring sits higher than a #20. Height is as important, if not more so, than ring size.

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

For comparison purposes I would be interested in a photo of braided GSP leaving a spin reel spool and entering a stripping guide. For many saltwater situations GSP braid is rapidly replacing mono, as evidenced by products listed in catalogs and the price of premium mono.

Phil,
I’d like to see that as well. I’ve gone to much smaller stripper guides using braid that would not work well with mono.