A friend and I went fishing this morning for a nice day on the water.
Before leaving I grabbed three of my favorite rods off the wall, grabbed some reels, tackle box and the rest of the gear.
Imagine to my surprise when I went to put a reel on one of the rods and found that it was a casting rod, rather than the expected spinning rod.
I have two identical rods - except one is built with a spinning handle and guide and the other one is built with a casting handle and guides.

Since I did want to use that particular blank for the fishing we were doing, I decided to just turn the rod upside down and use it upside down with my spinning reel that I had been planning on using.

The surprise that I had, was that although there is terrific line slap at the first guide when casting, the incorrect guides only hurt my casting distance by about 20 feet. This was in comparison to an excellent spinning rod that I was also using pitching a similar weighted bait.

As I kidded to my buddy, the only other thing that one needs when using a casting trigger reel upside down is a hole saw to saw a hole in the palm of your hand which would allow you to hold the trigger of the reel seat in the hole.

But all kidding aside - I had never ever tried this test before. At the time I was casting with 8 lb mono - of the same brand and type on both reels.

But at the end of the day, a great day on the water with some nice fish being caught and a vow, to never make the mistake again of picking up the incorrect rod when going fishing.

I was just surprised that the very low casting guides did not affect my overall casting distance any worse than it did.

Roger

I have a set of old casting rods that I use just once a year for a carp tournament. I use spinning reels for this so I can cast more precisely under logs and stuff. It's pretty surprising how well they cast, especially considering that some are pretty stiff and rigged up with cheap 40lb braided line. :)

The trigger does get in the way though, I've been considering cutting it off on a few of the rods since I know I'll never use them for anything else...

To me, it's just been a testament of the notion that, if you don't do a perfect job on the guide placement, you'll still probably come out OK.

By the way, before you pick on me for all of this, I use this setup because I don't feel like investing money into 6 new heavy spinning rods that will only be used for carp :).

Scott,
The conclusion that I came to - when using the casting rod with a spinning reel, that if you cut off the trigger, cut off the first guide and replaced it with a larger spinning or microwave guide, you would essentially be set. Just need something bigger at first to tame the loop and the other guides could be largely left unchanged.

Roger

Roger, have you considered that what you have when you do the one guide replacement is in concept pretty close to the Fuji "Rapid Choke" concept?