A nice older Barefoot spinning surf rod has come into my possesion. It has some guide and reel seat issues so I plan to rebuild it. The specs on the blank are as follows:

Fishing Barefoot 15T Surf Rod 11'
FBSS11H Heavy Line Wt. 20-40lb. Lure Wt. 2-8oz
Guides: 40, 30, 25, 16, 12, 10, & 10 tip top
Guide Spacing from TIP:
#40- 70-5/8"
#30- 52-3/4"
#25- 38-1/4"
#16- 26"
#12- 15-7/8"
#10- 7-1/4"
Guide Spacing from Reel Seat"
#40- 32-3/4"

I am thinking about rebuilding this for a conventional reel. My question is would the guide spacing be the same? I have no experience with surf rods and I am not sure how the guide spacing was figured out originally....

Thanks in advanced

Eric Brown



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2010 01:29PM by Eric Brown.

Eric,
Your rod sounds like it was built using the "Cone of Flight' guide distribution method and the ideas of an earlier era that dictated that a spinning rod have five or six guides irrespective of the length of the rod. Since you are planning on building it as a conventional rod, you will not use the same spacing and not the same size or number of guides. Rodmaker Magazine had an in depth article about building Surf Rods a couple of years ago. Another issue had a short article about guide spacing. These would be very helpful if you can locate a copy of these issue or just the articles themselves. My own thought would be to rebuild this rod with a simple spiral wrap. This will reduce the twisting force on your arm when casting 8 Oz baits. You will need 11 or 12 guides plus a tip top for an 11 foot conventional rod. Good luck with your project.

Mike Blomme

If you decide to go spiral I would look at the OQuinn spiral method where a surf rod is concerned. Or if you just stick with guides on the top you can consider something like what that rod in conventional form would have used way back when. Probably something like 20, 16, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12 and a top to match. I think on something that heavy you can do it with just seven or eight guides.

If this was my project, I would mount the guides at the original measurments with surgical tubing bands or tape,mount the reel that you are going to use with the rod,attach a 2 foot piece of 2 inch pvc pipe to your bench or table at a 30 to 45 deg angle,put the butt in pvc up to the reel seat,run the line through the guides,tie off to a 5 gal bucket with some sand,tighten drag to your normal maximum drag setting,turn reel handle to put a load on the rod. Make sure the line does not touch the blank, if it does, move the guides or add guides so you have a nice arc that follows the blank. Also,if using 6 or 8 oz of sinker and a power cast (OTG,Hatteras,modified pendulum) you will need a shock leader of 50 lb test minimum (10 lb test for each ounce of lead is what is recomended) that runs from the sinker back to 3 or 4 wraps on the reel. The knot connecting the running line( 20lb) to the leader (50-80lb) is rather large.I use size 20 guides as my smallest guide and 20 ring for the tip (knot clearance) .In other words from butt,30-25-20-20-20-20 tip.

Rich brings up a good point. The smallest guide I was ever able to get by with when using a heavy shock leader and related knot was a 16. So be careful on the smaller guides if you think there's any chance you'll be employing a shock leader.

..........

Thank for the help Gentlemen. I'm hoping I can keep them where they are (were). It sure would make life easier with all the old epoxy under the guides wraps. I will make a decision on guides, mock up and load it. That's a good idea. As Michael mentioned, it was setup using the "cone fo flight" method. I am new and have only learned the NGC so I did not know if there was any rhyme or reason to the spacing. I was hoping they were spaced to distribute the load evenly and I could keep the casting guides in the same place. Tom, I did get a chance to cast it this past weekend with a Penn 7500SS loaded with 50lb. braid using a 13-14 foot 60lb. shock leader. I tied a very tidy Uni to Uni and I had no issue with the 10s.

Speaking from Experience because your knot passes thru during testing,once you get sand under your feet it might change. I have a rod in my rack that I will need to rebuild due to fouling the tip and second guide with weed while fishing. it completely stopped line retrieval when it built up at the guides, had to lower the rod to clear the jam. will be replacing those with 16's

My main passion is surf fishing and I used a LOT of rods over the past few years.

I found that size 16 guides are the best compromise. The rods I build usually go 30 -- 25 -- 16 -- 16 ...........

I have built two surf rods I use for distance fishing over the outer sand bars and I found that dropping down to 25 -- 20 -- 12 --- 12 --- ...... with a size 16 tip give me slightly more distance than using 16's to finish out the rod.

I never had a problem with my shock knot using size 12 guides unless there was a lot of grass in the water and that was only when reeling the line in. Never once did my shock knot ever break or get caught in a guide. 90% of the time I use 17lb mono running line tied onto 50 or 60 lb Berkley big game shock leader using a spider hitch to no name knot, or an improved albright.

A couple little things I learned that worked for me:
try and keep the first guide as far away from the reel seat as you can without the line rubbing the grips or getting way out of control.
Don't use too many guides, only use enough to keep the line off the blank without any sharp bends.
Use a tip that is 1 size larger than your running guides.
Make sure you have the reel that you are going to use on the rod when you figure out where to place your first guide.

PS -- for reference, all my surf fishing rods I built are customized for conventional reels (Penn 525mag) and 17 lb MONO line.