Looking at mudhole’s colored casting guides in red. Anyone have any experience with these? Any good or should I stay away from them? Fresh water bass fishing.

Colored Casting Guides for Freshwater Casting Rods
SKU: #GNRC-6

There's nothing wrong with them. You really can't go wrong with a PVD coated zirconium insert, and if the source of the guides is who I think it is, they are a very fine guide. The only issue I have with that line of guides is that there is not a matching single foot fly guide to use for running guides. You are limited to using all double foot casting guides or v frame spinning guides for the single foot guides, which puts the guides too far away from the blank for my taste on a casting rod.

Thanks for the reply and input.

Is a 10, 8, 6 guide size to big for a 6’6” casting rod. Seems like a 8,6,5 would be better?

Casting guide trains are typically not too terribly complicated. Determining the largest guide typically involves the reel you are using. With larger round reels, particularly those with wide spools, a larger butt guide can keep the line from staking on one side of the spool or the other. Additionally, those bigger reels tend to be taller and a taller guide may be useful here. A 10-12mm double foot guide can be in order at times. With a low profile reel, the spool is narrower and smaller. Anywhere from a 4-10mm can work surprisingly well. If you are employing techniques like flipping where you need to reach out and grab the line, a butt guide with a higher frame can make it easier to get the line if you have large fingers. Generally in bass fishing we aren't handling the rod by the fore grip, so we don't need to worry about keeping the line off of our hand, which is another application where taller guides are in order.

The next step is to determine what you want for the smallest guides. If you are not passing large knots and want to take advantage of the weight reduction of micro guides, 3-4mm single foot guides are an excellent option for the smallest guides. If you need to pass knots through the guides or prefer larger guides 5-6mm single foot guides for the smallest work well. My preferences these days are 4mm for micro builds and 5mm for more conventional builds. The 5mm guides are large enough to pass most leader connections easily, and dropping below 4mm doesn't provide as much benefit unless it's a particularly light powered rod.

When building with micro guides and a low profile reel, I'll typically use a 6mm double foot followed by 4mm single foots to the the tip.

When building with a more traditional look, I'll use an 8mm double foot, maybe a 6mm double foot and then 5mm to the tip, but 8mm double foot and 5mm single foots will work equally well. The extra double foot if more for aesthetics in those cases.

For something with a round reel, a 10mm double foot, 6mm double foot and 4mm or 5mm single foots to the tip can work well.

Both of those options will look perfectly at home on a 6'6" rod with a low profile reel.

With that said, you can step further out of the box, and use all single foot micro guides to the tip. It generally means that you will be putting the butt guide a couple inches further up the blank, but given that your line already has to pass through a level wind that is 3-4mm wide, you know it will make it just fine. Now, I haven't pulled out my old Millionaire or Garcia reels to see how they perform with an all micro build, but I suspect they would fair better than you might naively think.

Casting guide trains are pretty forgiving. You have options, and what you go with will depend on how far from conventional you are willing to push things. Most of my factory rods from the late 90s and earlier started with at least a 12mm butt guide. When you compare those rods to what is available now and what we can do as builders, it's significantly different.

I have used those colored guides in green and I like them just fine!

I have a rod out there with green guides, maybe 10 years old, looked fine a month ago.