Hi everyone, my first post on this forum. I don't want to sound like an old grump, and I'm not against new things and new ideas. But I'm starting to wonder, how in the world were we ever able to fish more than a few minutes with all those clunky, heavy, awkward IM6 rods with standard Fuji guides? My gosh, the dern things must have weighed several ounces when they were finished! You might as well fish with an aluminum bat!

OK, OK, I'm done with the sarcasm now. But I'm seriously confused. I was in Gander Mountain last weekend and looking at the latest bass rods, Carrot Stix and the Skeet Reese things. Covered with these tiny little 4mm things that barely stick out of the finish. I don't get it. Is keeping the line off of the blank no longer important? Those things are so low on a casting blank that you'd need 20 of them to pass a static test. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Is the reduced weight that significant? Does leaving an inch and a half cork foregrip off the rod save so much weight that you'd want that butt ugly foregripless seat and check setup? I'd really like to know what you guys think. Or is this just a new fad?

I think you should use the proper sized guides. That's always the best route if you want optimum performance.

Guides are guides. You can stick any label you want on them but in the end, you should be using the smallest and lightest guides that will still easily pass your required line and any connections and hold up to the task at hand. That might be a size #2.5, or it might be a size #10, either way, use the correct size for what you're doing and you'll have a better rod.

Reducing weight improves the reaction and recovery speed of the rod. A lighter rod is a more efficient rod.

..........

I just finished two Rainshadow CB80's, one with "conventional" guides and the other with micros. While there was a slight increase in distance with the micros, the biggest advantage was the weight reduction. There was no longer a need for a counter balance weight. Combine the lack of this with the lighter guides, to me the difference was huge.

Milt,
I think that everyone has valid points when it comes to micros.

It is interesting about your point about the line rubbing on the blank. It seemed that for years and years there was a big point made about keeping the line straight and keeping it from touching the blank.

Now, with the use of micros on conventional rods, the line touching the blank has been tossed out the window along with the dirty water.

So, if, with micros, it doesn't matter that the line touches or runs under the blank during the catching of a fish, I suppose that we must have been wrong with the thought that it would be a good idea to keep the line from not only rubbing on the blank, but even brushing the blank.

But I believe that Mr. Kirkman has it right in his statement , "use the guide on the particular rod, that is appropriate for the use to which the guide and the blank will be subjected". As he pointed out, if this means using micros, use them. If it means using conventional guides. use them. If it means using a combination of conventional, oversized and micros - use them.

I know that folks talk about weight reduction. But if you put three micros on for every conventional guide that you would normally use, how much weight have you actually saved?

I also agree with your comments on the appearance of certain rods. In that same vein - I wonder about the comfort of some of the rods on the market - especially with respect to reel seat and handle design.

I believe that a fishing rod is a tool - much like a hammer and a saw. The fishing rod is in the hand of a person who is fishing for one purpose. Allow that person to catch fish in the way that he/she likes in a manner in which they wish to catch the fish.

For some folks, that means a nice lazy way of fishing. For some folks, that means a very intense, very concentrated, very high speed way of fishing.

So, again for each person there is a choice to be made. Once the person has made the choice, it is up to you and I as the custom rod builder to create the perfect rod for that persons choices. i.e. that person will be 100% satisfied, if the rod that he as rod builders create, meet the vision of what the client had in his/her mind when the rod was specified.

As someone once said a long time ago, "It is not our choice to object, but it is our duty to do or die." Of course - I hope that none of us die as a result of meeting the expectations of our clients, but in the end, client satisfaction is what it is all about.

If we like rods a certain way - lets build them that way.
If our clients want rods a certain way - we need to build them that way to stay in business.

Live long and prosper.

Roger

Could not have written that any better Roger& Tom thanks for writing that one. Nothing is carved in stone ...and the customer or Fisherman AKA User of the rod should be the biggest dictator of what it should be in its creation.

Rick H.

rwheil@msn.com

Website
[www.facebook.com]
[home.comcast.net]

Most of what we do when building rods are compromises... as in life, when we do something to add one benefit, we have to give something else up; there is no free lunch.

Micros - Even if you use the old standard small 6mm guides, the line will often hit the loaded blank, unless it is a broomstick. Just another reason to build spiral or spinning instead.

Split grip - A little weight saved here, a little weight saved there... it all adds up for a lighter and more sensitive rod.

However, while I will use small seats, and split-seats with cork inserts, I don't build split-grips. A rod built with a split-grip is missing a piece of it's handle.

It always depends on the client. My tournament fishing clients always want the absolute lightest rod. That means high modulus blanks, split grips, split seats, spiraled micros, and very little finish. My casual fishing buddies just want cool looking fishing poles. That means lower modulus blanks, conventional guides, decorative wraps occasionally, figured wood reel seats occasionally, etc.

On my personal rods, I go with SCIIIs usually, split grips (with very short sections of cork), split ECSM seats and spiraled titanium fuji guides. I really like the extreme light weight of these set-ups. These rods just feel great.

Everyone has their comfort level. I suspect a superior rod wouldn't put as many fish in the boat if you lack confidence in it. I can only speak for myself but this is what I have noticed. It should be noted that I am an old grump who fishes salt water, typically reef and blaue water.

I use a lot of spinning gear so line rub isn't a problem. It can be negated on convential rods by going with a spiral wrap. I used to use double foot guides with underwraps. I used to fish mono and always had a shock leader so I had to pass some bulky knots. The spools of my reels were big compared to the lenght of the rods. This kept me in a cone of flight type of guide train regardless.

Nowadays I am moving towards braid which allows a physically smaller reel. I have gone to a little longer rod. All of this has allowed me to use smaller guides with the 27X method. I no longer use a double foot guides nor underwraps on spinning rods. The smallest guide I have used is a fuji alconite fly rod type in size 4. I have that mated to a 2500 reel loaded with power pro. I can cast a mono to braid uni knot connection with no problems. The smaller guides are less prone to getting damaged. There is certainly no concern about the guides standing up to the fish (which I admit to having doubts about). I do need a fore grip but I keep them shorter and smaller in diameter. I am just starting to get into other materials like a carbon tube for the butt grip. My rods have to live in rod holders so a split grip is out for me. The biggest obstacle in this evolution was my pig headed notions of what a serious salt water rod should look like and be comprised of.

I had an important experience with one of the first rods I built. I had a friend who used to build rods and I had hoped he would teach me. I showed him the blank and he feel in love with it and had to have one. He had no interest in building again so he had a local builder make him two. I built my own and spiral wrapped it. His was built old school style. The difference in how these rods fish and the apparant power was large. Enough so that I love my rod, my friend doesn't like his, and he acnowledges mine is better in all ways. Funny though, when I offered to re-wrap his in a spiral he declined.

So my advice is try it both ways. Me thinks you will answer your own questions in short order. Don't go into it with any notion of what the finished product should look like. Let a static test tell you where the guides need to be. Do spiral wrap. Be honest about required guide sizes and consider what many are saying about the level wind being your first guide. Ask yourself how often you place a hand on a foregrip and eliminate it if it isn't used. Question the need of anything and everything. Many have determined they don't actually need a reel seat and wrap their reels right on their butt grip and epoxy them in place.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think beholding more quality fish in the ice chest is beauty enough to make up for an ugly rod....lol!

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Some thoughtful responses, which I appreciate greatly. Thanks.

Got me to thinking though, so I pulled out one of my rods. It's a 6'6" St. Croix SC II casting rod for bass, must be 10 years old. I pulled the reel, an Okuma San Juan 150 and weighed it on my postal scale. 11 ounces. I weighed the rod. 5.5 oz. The rod has split cork grips with a standard Fuji graphite trigger seat, and a 2.5" cork foregrip. A simple diamond wrap about 8" long. 8 Fuji NLG guides. Total weight of the combo is a half ounce short of 1 pound.

Now, I agree completely with the remarks made about making a customer happy, and that anyone will fish better with something they have confidence in. You won't hear anything truer said than that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Still, I wonder if this discussion makes any sense. If that rod didn't have a foregrip, skipped the diamond wrap, and had 9 or 10 micros wrapped on it, can you guys that have worked with them tell me what it would weigh? Would you cut the weight by 1.5 oz.? Even 2? And does that make any difference in how it would fish? Most of the weight is obviously in the reel. Do you think that the great majority of anglers can tell the difference between a 14 oz. combo and a 15? I have my doubts, big ones.

But it makes for an interesting talk, doesn't it?

Milt, the guys buying my rods can and do tell the difference.
They are two main groups now, travel rods with their unique characteristics and micros and REC guides help with some parts of that too and tournament bass fishermen at various levels.
I have not built a rod for others over 4 oz for a long time. Most are way less. If my rods do not weight less, cast further and are not more sensitive than what you can buy off the shelf, why would they want to buy it?They are not cheaper, in fact they cost more so what are they buying other than their name on a label and maybe a handle length they like?
As to the whole rig weighing 15 oz, many of my rigs with reels weight less than 10. Try a MHX DS822 with16 10 8 and 4 minimas to the tip, PG instead of epoxy, and a CI4 spinning reel and you are just over 8.5 maybe 9 oz depending on certain choices you make(TN style grip with taped on reel).
Modern braid lines mean smaller spools, means smaller reels and lower mass,using Graphite frames.Smaller guides because smaller coils of softer line. Smoothies and ABEC 5 bearings gives us the same or better casting distance plus even better stopping power. Porting of parts on reels, reel seats all reduce mass. All this with greater sensitivity and less fatigue.The results of being able to cast say just 50 more times per day for a person who is doing it in a tournament results in more fish in the boat per season, more money in the bank. Same with getting less tangles and farther casts, its all more water covered and fish in the boat per hour.
If people could not tell the difference why are they not all buying an ugly stick?

You might want to read Bill Colby's article in a recent issue of RodMaker pertaining to what various components actually weigh, and what weight savings is actually achieved by using different combinations of parts.

Having said that, a lighter rod, particularly on the upper half and provided you're not losing any required durability, is generally a better rod which reacts and recovers more quickly as well as reducing angler fatigue.

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

There are several different attributes to rod performance, total weight is only one. "Feel the bite" sensitivity is another. There is also tip weight. Since a rod is like a lever, any weight placed near the tip will be magnified. The closer it is to the tip, the greater the effect weight has on momentum and apparent rod weight in use. Try this... affix a sinker to the butt guide and move the rod around... now remove it and affix it to the tip of the rod... big difference in performance. The implications for using light, high modulus blanks and micro guides are huge.

As far as total weight goes, on a ML bass rod, I can tell the difference in overall weight between reels with as small as four-tenths of an ounce difference.

Regarding "feel the bite" sensitivity, assuming the rest of the rig and rod blank are fairly sensitive, I can tell the difference between the aluminum and spare plastic spool on a spinning reel.

But unless people are taught these things or learn these things on their own, they don't notice the difference or miss the advantages. Ignorance can be bliss!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2012 12:25PM by Gary Snyder.

From your numbers I would have to say that yes your rod is heavy. The last 6’6” rod I built weighed 2.35oz, combine that with a modern lightweight reel and you would have a combo that weighs half of what yours does, I guarantee that anybody could tell a huge difference. Nowadays you don’t have to pay exorbitant money to get light reels, you can still get Steez or Core reels in the 5oz class but they are $400+, but you can get a Curado 50 or Quantum Smoke, which are 6oz reels for less than half that.

Milt - yes 100% you can feel the difference. Granted my senses are more attuned, but I can usually tell a half ounce difference in a rig when I pick them up.

My typical custom 7' "Heavy power" bass rod weighs 4 oz or slightly under. My production version weighs .2 oz more on average.

Granted I use proprietary blanks, but there are plenty of offerings out there that would help you get in that weight range.

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

I just finished up refurbishing a few rods I made well over 10 years ago. I stripped basically everything off but the handles and that included guides and butt wrap. 2 of these rods are 7 foot medium heavy rods, one for jigs and the other is for a carolina rig. The guides that were on the rods were what was typically used back in the day for bass rods, or at least what I thouhgt I needed to use. The rods went from around 7.5-8 oz to 4 and 4.5 oz after using micro guides. You can really tell a difference when using the rods now. On big thing I see in the weight reduction, I do not use as much energy to make my casts, the rods seem to work so much better at doing the work. Only thing I didn't do yet was make the rear grips a split grip which I know will take out at least another ounce out of the rods. These now feel like totally differnet rods and much better to use.

Mike,

Just out of curiosity, what in the world did you have on those rods? A difference of 3.5oz. just by swapping guide trains and stripping some decorative work seems a bit high, but I don't doubt what you say. I would expect more along the lines of 0.5oz or so from that type of modification. I only expect to shave about 1-1.25oz. total (as much as 1.5-1.75oz. if I go a different route with grip materials), off of a couple of factory rods that I'm stripping and rebuilding. That includes going to split grip with no fore grip. The guide train swap probably won't take much more than 1/4-3/8oz. off of the total weight of the build, but it makes a noticeable difference in the way the rod reacts.

Milt,

When a fisherman handles a well executed split grip, no fore grip rod, they shouldn't have to modify anything they do when they change from a full grip rod to a a design with less material. If they have to alter the way they do things, or the ergonomics are wrong, then material was taken away that was needed. A quick look at the wear/oil residue patterns on a customers handles will tell right away if they are good candidates for split grip handles. Very little wear on the fore grip? Get rid of it, they don't need it there. A space of unworn cork in the middle of the butt grip? Split the grip, no cork is needed there. When it comes to weight reduction, one has to be very careful in being sure that what is needed on the rod is there. Some simple oversights can make the difference between a great grip and a design that doesn't get the job done.

Joe

Like a lot of us, I am building some micros, and using them on the water, to see what seems to work for me. The added number of guides used, to keep the line slap off the rod blank is the main thing that seems a bit hard to get used to. But the results seem to be worth it. I am building one now with eva foam grips. I think it will be a sweet rod. If I would quit moving the guides around, and finish it, i woud be able to enjoy it!
A great thread here. Thanks for everyones input.

Kyle your quote:

"The added number of guides used, to keep the line slap off the rod blank is the main thing that seems a bit hard to get used to."

The "line slap" you note - casting, spinning rods or both?

When does this "line slap occur"?

What do you use to determine an additional number of guides whan using micros?

Tom Kirkman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Having said that, a lighter rod, particularly on
> the upper half and provided you're not losing any
> required durability, is generally a better rod
> which reacts and recovers more quickly as well as
> reducing angler fatigue.
>
> ............

I agree 100%, and I think Tom is putting it mildly. Every now and then I pick up my old Falcon 7' and I can't believe how tip heavy it is. And the line touches the blank.

As for keeping line off the blank - I don't. I let it touch the blank.

I think Bobby F was the man that put a section of graphite blank in a lathe and spun it up while holding a length of mono against the blank. Both the blank and line survived.

Chuck

_________________________________________
"Angling is extremely time consuming.
That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

Bill, I was referring to the extra guides on a casting rod. I look at some on the market, the guides are spaced from 2 1/2 inches from the tip down through about 7 running guides. Then maybe 4 inches, whatever. As I do a static test, on the blank, to mimic the curve with the micros, it seems like i need more than I want. Just confusing for me. When we build on a casting blank, with normal sized guides (down to about a 6, is what I usually build), we space the guides out more, with a good line curve that mimics the curve of the blank. When I do the same with the micros, it seemed like it was touching the blank. Maybe this is not as big of an issue as I thought...
That is what I was referring to. The rod I am building is a medium power, fast action.
kyle