I am about to start building some heavy halibut jigging rods and a couple of downrigger rods. These are quite a departure from the fly rods that are my mainstay. I intend to use the spiral guide placement for these. Since casting distance is not an issue here at all, do I need to have the reels to be used with these rods in hand before I place the butt guides? The blanks are Lamiglass BE6650b (I think- I don't have them in front of me at the moment) and don't seem to have much (if any) flex in the lower third of the blank.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Andy

I think you'd still want to have some similar reels on hand so you can get the butt guild placement right. The width and height would surely affect where those first few guides need to go. There have been two good spiral guide placement methods written up in Rodmaker magazine over the past year. They have a link on the left side here and you can go to their site and get the back issues that have those articles if they are still available. They will get you set up perfectly.

Also there was a string on this board earlier that had something to do with spiral wrapping. You can scroll down or do a search in the archives. I now use spiral wraps on all my casting rods whether they are for casting or not. I really like it and it doesn't look so funny anymore. Guess I'm getting used to it!

Thanks Pete

I've only subscribed to the magazine for less than a year and ordered a couple of issues that came out beforehand. I have one issue which deals with this guide placement and have read the section in Clemens book. I need to get the issue with Ralph O'Quinn's article on this placement.

The issue seems to be placing the butt guide such that the angle at which the line contacts the guide is minimized (moving it away from the reel) while at the same time making sure that under full load the line does not contact the blank (moving the guide toward the reel). Guide height can also affect the later. I've decided (correctly I hope) to use the Fuji UNG guides.

The problem is that I don't have the reels that will be used with the rods and am hoping that I can get them built without them.

While it would seem desireable to build the rod with a particular model of reel in mind (for balance considerations etc) it also seems to me that a rod should be able to fish well with different reels, abeit of similar design specs.

andy

Andy,
Contact Don Morton. He know's his stuff about the spiral guide set up. He answered some of my posts earlier about this. Look in the archives and also take a look at @#$%& and do a search through the archives.

Good Luck,
Steve

Andy, a couple of thoughts related to the heavy rod. First you will be putting a great deal of pressure on the rod so it will be necessary to set the rod up for maximum load. The reel is important to allow you to set the butt guide so the line will not hit the fore grip or the butt guide on the side of the guide.

First this type rod is out of my league, but the concept will work on any rod. I start by spinning the rod in a verticle position by bending the tip to 90 degrees. The rod will turn to a position where the most effective spine will be on the outside of the curve. The tip guides will go on the inside of the curve. As you can see this is the way the rod wants to bend normally and will not torque when a load is applied. Now for the spiral. There are a number of ways to make the spiral. First the spiral must get around the rod before it gets to the curve. The line should run as straight as possible from the reel to the tip and the line should touch the guides only at the top or bottom (at the foot). I place the spiral guides on the line from a guide at the bend of the rod, when placed in a vertical position and flexed to 90 degrees. The set-up guide is placed where the rod bends about 1/2 inch from vertical. With the line guide on the oposite side of the reel from the spiral, move the butt guide up the line until the line touches the bottom of the guide. Adjust the butt guide until the line goes through the guide without bending on the side of the guide and only touches the bottom of the guide when the rod is flexed to the max. The second and third butt guides ar moved up the line and placed at about 60 and 120 degrees. This may vary as the guides should be placed where the line will run straight and touch only the top or bottom of the guide both when the rod is straight or flexed to the max. As a general rule the fourth guide will be 180 degrees from the reel.

Don't be afraid to put more guides on the rod than you think is necessary as it will give the rod more support. Drop me a line if I can assist you.

Thanks Don, I hoped you might chime in on this one.

I've spined the blanks on the vertical finder - as per your demonstration at the clave, the torque on one of the blanks was enormous. These are really monsterous blanks with a butt dia over 1"

I've no problem getting the blank to 90 degrees so the tip guides shouldn't be a problem.

It seems, as I suspected, that the reel is required to properly set the blank up. I don't think once I have the reel mounted I'll have problems - this is just going to hold up the build a bit.

Thanks for the help (and thanks to to Pete and Steve).

Andy