Interesting morning spent on testing a new St. Croix 4S66MLF. First, I took an hour to arrange the best Cone Of Flight system I could. With 1/4 of an ounce, squarely in the middle of the suggested weight range, with 8 pound mono my best COF set up could hit 105' give or take a few feet either way. This was with about twenty-five casts per guide set up. I settled on this one as my control group.

Next I took the guides down and began working with the New Guide Concept as shown in the library here and using the 27X method outlined in Rodmaker. Going exactly per the instructions, I was able to consistently hit 120' give or take a few feet either way.

From there I began tinkering. I changed out the size 6 running guides to size 4s but did not see any real change from the average 120'. Dropped to size 3 micros but again no real difference from about 120'.

From there I began tinkering with the guides towards the butt from the choker. I had a butt guide and two transition guides prior to reaching the choker. So I removed one of the transition guides and cast some more. No real change but more line "noise."

So next I changed the butt guide size from a 25 to a 20. This necessitated moving the butt guide forward a good bit. This time the distance did increase but only about 2' to 3' on average.

Because I did not like the butt guide so far forward of the reel I moved back to the 25 butt guide and left it there as 120'?? is more than my needed casting distance for this rod will ever be. I stayed with size 4 choker and running guides as they worked as well as the 6s or the 3s.

My overall experience is that the NGC is much better than the COF. With the NGC strictly following the instructions in the magazine article I found that the initial set up was hard to improve upon no matter how much tinkering and tweaking I did. It appears to be almost spot on right out of the box. It seemed that no matter what I did with the guides there was either no noticeable improvement or very little improvement. I was somewhat surprised that moving to much smaller guides on the tip area did not result in a marked increase in casting difference.

It has been fun and I have learned a good deal today. I only wish there were an easier method for attaching and moving guides than masking tape!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2009 01:16PM by Barry Kneller.

Barry,

There is an easier way!! Just buy some lengths of latex surgical tubing or go to a hobby store and buy sections of the tubing they use for fuel lines in RC airplanes and such, then take a razor blade and cut 1/16" bands from them. Now you pretty much have a lifetime supply of "rubber bands" to attach your guides for test casting or holding for wrapping. When wrapping, wrap till the guide is firmly attached then just touch the band with a razor blade or scalpel blade and they will fly off, then you can finish and tie off your wrap.

Bill in WV

How much improvement you'll see by tinkering and tweaking depends entirely upon how close you are to the optimum set up at the start. The worse your opening set-up is, the more improvement can be expected by continued tweaking. The better it is at the start, the less you're going to improve upon it no matter how much tweaking you do. Eventually you'll reach a point of diminishing returns where it takes one heck of a lot of work to squeeze out an extra couple of feet.

The NGC as illustrated in Volume 10 #4 will generally put you squarely in the ballpark so that any additional work isn't going to net you a great deal of extra distance. As you found out, it's pretty darn close right out of the box.

I would have expected that smaller running guides might have netted you some measurable increase, but within the confines of your rod, reel and line, that very slight difference may not have been enough to really get you any extra since you started with fairly small guides at the outset. But you might try this - swap the current running guides for say, 10's or 12's and try it again. I'd bet that your average distance will decrease.

At least you did take the time to try some things for yourself. This is how you gain experience in areas like butt guide sizing and spacing. Do enough of this and eventually you can set up most anything in your shop and pretty much know how it's going to do out on the water.

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

Bill is dead on the money. And to add, you can "double over" those rubber bands on a round burnishing tool and roll them right off the tool and onto the blank very easily and you'll have a TIGHT fit for the guides as well = easier test casting. Tape stinks, it's a PIA.

DR

I wonder how it will act with ( M ) guides on the butt. Higher guides with smaller rings. maybe at the same distance from the reel ??

Bill - willierods.com

There is one more test you may want to try if you have the desire.

Recoil makes fly guides (the kind that's single footed with a large circular opening) that weighs no more than your micros. So now you have the weight saving of the micros but a much larger ID more akin to a normal size 6 or 7. Would be interesting to see if the line is choked less, but the blank is loading less from the large guides, whether you can get more distance this way.

Personally if I knew going with a smaller butt guide would net me a few more feet or even zero gain, I would choose that to decrease weight, cost and easier transport from having a smaller butt guide.

Thanks for sharing your test result.

Mo