I'm building a 7'6 Thrasher blank for throwing poppers to tuna . Yellowfin and blacks . The reel is a 14k Saragosa with 65lb brain and 50lb top shot. I've tried many guides and the only way I can get the line to not slap the blank is to use the fuji kw guides. Starting with a 40 ring, then to 25 to 16. It working ok but I'm having to push the butt guide out to 33" from the face of the reel. I guess my question is the 33" to butt guide. Is it ok to push the butt guide out this far or do I need to rethink my reduction and try to find taller guides ? the 40 kw is 79mm tall.

Thanks. Joe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2024 11:59AM by joe williams.

How long is your 50lb top shot? And does it only slap with a closer butt guide with the top shot or even with the main line?

In looking at rod recipes/guide spacing charts for tuna popping blanks from Rainshadow, it looks like their butt guide placement is about 22" from the top of the spool so 33" does seems far but not insane. If thats what casts the best, thats what I would go with.

The top shot is about 50 yards long. Before I went to the KW guides it wouldnt cast to the end of the top shot, with the KW"s its doing good. 60 yard cast is fairly easy with a 1.5oz test weight. Just never had to put the butt guide that far out. I guess the big saragosa is complicating things. I'm gonna leave it as is and see how it works. Thanks.

I just ordered a 7’6” thrasher. Which particular blank are you building on and what reel?

Since you are in essence only throwing the top shot now, I would mess with its length to improve casting and maybe guide placement.

joe williams Wrote:
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> The top shot is about 50 yards long. Before I went
> to the KW guides it wouldnt cast to the end of the
> top shot, with the KW"s its doing good. 60 yard
> cast is fairly easy with a 1.5oz test weight. Just
> never had to put the butt guide that far out. I
> guess the big saragosa is complicating things. I'm
> gonna leave it as is and see how it works. Thanks.

14000 size reel and 50lb mono is a tricky combo.

Why the long top shot? Not sure where youre fishing, but in the GOM for YFT, I have never used leaders more than 10-12'. I think cutting down your topshot could greatly increase casting performance.

I guess I can understand the long top shot because you don't have to retie it as often because of it getting shorter when you have to retie your terminal tackle, makes total sense to me because I hate tying on leaders. lol But looking at the specs for your reel, you're using 50# line on a reel that has a line capacity of 190 yards of 25# line.

Now I have zero experience with saltwater fishing, but based on my experience with spinning gear using fluorocarbon as the main line. I'd have to guess that spool diameter is playing a huge role in casting performance loss. Relatively speaking, the stiffer the line, the larger the importance of spool diameter on spinning gear.

Using Berkley Big Game as an example .... you're using a line for your top shot, that has a diameter of .028", on a reel rated for a line with a diameter of .019". When you make a 50 yard cast, you've reduced the diameter of the line on the spool, by about half. The coils in the line are going to be tighter, which will cause additional drag as the line is clearing the spool lip, and the line won't flatten out as easily as it's passing through the guides.

Your line slap is related to the distance you're having to place your first guide.

As Patrick is alluding to, seems to me the problem is with the length and even the size of your top shot. If you can reduce the line size of your top shot, you may still be able to use a top shot of that length. If you need that big of a top shot, then as Patrick says, reducing its' length to 10 - 12', heck even 30' in length has got to help. 50 yards just seems unnecessarily long to me.

the blank model is TR-MF-H I think.

I ordered the reel loaded with line from Meltons and the amount of top shot selection was short or long.
I selected short. I'm new to tuna fishing so I could shorten the top shot. I may cut it off completely and see how it casts.

One of the motors on the boat decided to spit out its internals so its down for repair. Now I'll have more time to mess with the rod.
Thanks for the reply's.

My friends and I just bought several of these exact same blanks on which to build popping rods for bluefin and yellowfin in the northeast. I'm also a noob to the tuna game. I know enough to know that I don't know enough to design a rod on my own. So I did a bit of research by looking at custom and off the shelf popping rods online and in person. I took some measurements to get some ideas for handle length, guide configuration, etc. After looking at a number of rods, I decided to go with Fuji MN spinning guides in size 40, 25, 16 and 10 for my reduction train, and size 8s for running guides. I decided to go with the MNs because I noticed that several rod makers used them and reverse mount the stripper guide to reduce the chance of knots getting caught in the frame. I don't think you can reverse the KW guides because the ring is slanted toward the tip of the rod. Here's an example of popping rods that look like they use MN guides with the first guide reversed: [efishentcustomrods.com]. These rods are well regarded here in the northeast. I've also seen rods that use KW guides as well. For example, these rods from Centaur come with either KW or MN guides: [www.centauranglerschoice.com]. I haven't received the blanks yet, so it will be awhile before I even start to build the rod, but I'll post back here as things progress.

I have to agree with what others have said here and think a 50 yard top shot has more disadvantages than advantages; line twist, stretch, line slap, reduced casting distance, reduced overall line capacity.

I've tried the MN guides and some alps guides 50 and 40 mm ring. Forward and reverse, still had line slap no mater where I placed the guide. The combination of the 14k gosa and a large long fore grip and me being a rookie is complicating things. I am having fun figuring this out tho. The next test is to remove the top shot and use just braid and see how much I can move the butt guide closer to the fore grip. Thanks for the reply. Joe.

I'm with Patrick. Get rid of that long top shot. It's going to cast a country mile with more braid coming through those guides. We've used 10-12 ft leaders in Panama. You'll end up with a better guide train. Fuji KW will work im more familiar with them and 33 inches out seems a little excessive but again will change once you get rid of that mono.

My suspicion is that he may have gotten so much topshot to fill the spool, they may have ran out of braid a little early, now I wonder how much of the spool is mono after casting it off, everything will start from there with further fishing, may have to take the line off and add some backing, just a thought, something they may have not wanted to do themselves at the time.