Good day.

I am thinking about trying some of the new K Series as stripper guides on a 7 weight fly rod and would love to hear from people who have used these guides on fly rods.

Did they look weird? Did they function the same? better?

One other question, would it be OK to switch to the traditional, perpendicular single foot Fuji guides for the running guides, or would that look weird?

Thanks,

Tony

I use the K guides as stripping guides on just about every fly rod I build. They are great, especially the titanium ones. Generally If I'm building one for a friend, I use the stainless guides, and for me, I use titanium guides. Both have an excellent finish.

They do not look weird, and theoretically shed tangles better.

The running guides are your call, I've only built 1 fly rod with the Fuji K running guides and I bent one of the guides last week on the Kenai. Traditional snake guiides are "tougher" if that matters to you.

Drew

Hi, Drew.

Thanks for the information. I have bent a few running guides in my day. I don't use snake guides, so I would use running guides all the way out.

Do you think the K series would any more or less prone to getting bent in actual use.

Thanks,

Tony

I think the KT running guides actually hold up better than normal single foot guides, but nothing holds up in rough conditions as well as a snake guide. I should add that I bent the guide accidentally whacking a tree branch, not while actually fishing. It was self induced rod trauma, unfortunately. It did bend back into position without issue, and went right back into service. I probably won't even bother to replace it. That same rod had a different brand of single foot guides previously and they bent easily, so I stripped them off and went to the KTs. Glad I did.

That rod probably caught 150 salmon in the last week, pretty fun time. I'm headed back up there next month for Silvers and will use that rod as my primary rod. That's how much I actually liked fishing the rod. The K guides (KW stripping and KT running) make a really nice fly rod.

To answer your question about whether they are better, here is my take---Ceramic guides on a fly rod do not cast better than regular snake guides. However, with a big fish on, they are MUCH better when playing the fish. Because of the decreased friction, the line plays out better when the fish is running and there is an all around "smoothness" that is hard to articulate. The decreased friction makes the drag work better when the fish is taking line. It's quite impressive when you are used to something different.

Based on fishing my rod with the k guides last week, one of my friends asked me to duplicate the same set up of an all K series fly rod on an 8 wt Z-Axis blank that he found, so I'm not the only one who noticed the difference.

Good luck with your build.

Drew

Drew!

That was a heck of a field report. Thanks very much. You are having too much fun up there.

Tony