Hello all,

First, let me begin by thanking all of you. I recently got a chance to fish with my first rod, an mhx UL blank with other carefully picked components. It was an incredible experience. Coincidentally, I had my best day of trout fishing in the NC mountains and my rod was truly, like nothing I have ever fished with. It was a dream come true to be able to use my own rod and catch countless trout, but particularly, 2 rainbows in the 20" inch range. I fought them for 4 minutes each and the rod handled beautifully. Thank you guys for all the help.

I am now wanting to build more and more rods. My next few rods will also be spinning rods, however, they will be bass rods. I plan on making a Medium Light power Drop Shot rod and a Medium powered Shakey head rod. As with my first rod, I would like to use Pac Bay's Match Series of guides, with the minima 4 inserts.

My question does not pertain to the Minima 4 guide insert, but rather, the actual Match Guide frame itself. I have read that these guides are particularly good for the NGC system because of their height, which is why I used them for my first rod. They cast great and handled 2lb fluoro with no problem so I think I will probably try to use these on my next rods.

The catalog indicates that these guides should be used for "Ultra light to light applications." Does this mean I shouldn't use them on a Medium powered bass rod, or does it mean that I just shouldn't use them on heavier saltwater rods?

The next logical option in the Pac Bay line would be the SVD guides but these are much shorter than the Match guides and I don't know how well they would work with the NGC system.

Thanks for your input guys,

Carlos

Carlos, I've built myself a 11' CTS rated for 3-6 ozs. for the surf useing size 10 single foot guides as my runners so, don't worry about those guides being too light.

Dennis J. Danku
(Sayreville,NJ)

Awesome! That's what I figured. I'll go ahead as planned.

It's the small 4 and 5 mm high frame match guides, I think, they worry about the most, as they hang up easy, go the low micro singlefoots that don't hang up as easily and I think you will be ok.
Back in the 80's when Diawa came out with their long spool "Aero" reels they made a set of "Aero" rods that went with them that had Match guides on them, don't remember any real problems I heard with the rods.
I have seen steelhead rods up to medium ( 8 to 12 lb. line, 1/4 to 5/8 oz. lure wt. ) using the guides, but mostly the 4 to 8 lb. test models, probably for 30 years now.