If you haven't tried it before, use a larger heavy wire snake fly guide as a hook keeper for some of your heavier action rods. The design of these snake guides, as well as the heavier wire, make a nice sturdy attractive hook keeper for those rods that use the big heavy hooks that tend to tear up the lighter more conventional hook keepers.

Roger

Fly guides have been used as hookkeepers for years. As for being used on heavy duty saltwater rods, well they'll disintegrate and break off from the salt in no time.

Lance

I use RECoil RSFX guides for hook keepers on inshore rods ... speckled trout to tarpon. They won't corrode AND the flexibility seems to help in keeping them around longer. I do a locking wrap AND extend the blocking wrap a full inch to help protect the blank against hook damage.

For salt you can use Ti guides. Take the ring out or leave it in ??

Bill - willierods.com

REC makes a recoil hook keeper. Guides used as hook keepers look silly in my opinion. I make most of my hook keepers now. I have titanium, nickel silver, stainless, and bronze wire in both round and square profiles. The square looks really nice if you twist it. Kinda like a rope. All you need to do is wrap the wire one compete turn around a small drill bit then shape the foot. Makes a hook keeper that is plenty strong and very nice looking.

Lane

Wrapping your leader behind your reel spool and securing your fly in the leg of your first stripping guide is a better alternative to a hook keeper. That way you keep the nail knot or loop on the end of your fly line out of the guides, enabling you to quickly fire the perfect cast to the big one who just appeared - without having to futz around shaking your line-leader connection out of your guide train.

Phil,
Actually, your idea is a good one, if the rod is the only one being stored.

But, if your rod is in a rod locker or is simply lying next to a bunch of other rods on the deck of a boat, this is not necessarily the best idea.

The reason is that the hook is 2-3 feet in front of the handle. If there are several other rods in the same area, it is very easy to have the hooks tangle, due to the close proximity.

But, if the keeper is next to the handle or butt of the rod, then, the thickness of the handle and the reel itself tends to keep the rods and thus the hooks separated and away from tangling.

There is nothing worse than grapping a rod from the rod box, a couple of feet up from the handle and having a hook jab into your hand.

Roger

Fly guides work great, and as Bill said, Ti will work well in salt as will 316 stainless, although Ti is better. Yes, Bill, leave the ring in.

In fresh water I've never failed a fly guide hook keeper frame or ring and no rings have come out.