In the last part of our salmon season I've gotten a chance to troll with some new people. We were trolling along an a fella got a dandy strike and being a monofilament user he of course had to set the hook.
The line broke and he was flustered 😫 of course and wanted to blame the knots. After a while during a lull an inspection was made as the old rod had been used many years. It amazed me that the fellow would continue to use it in this condition.
Yep he needs to turn the Rod over and use a Spinning Reel > >>>>>>
As I offered to replace the guides , He comments that he knew it was getting kinda bad.
A free total replacement is planned. I've been helped by others and it was my turn to help others.🤷♂️😊
Yep it's ready for a new life. Good on you for helping a fellow fisherman in distresss. You can give that old rod another 10-20 years depending on how well he takes care of it.
Ohana at work...good thing is anything you do will be an improvement. Bill
The poster child for grooved guides. That rod must have seen some stuff. Is it solid glass or tubular?
:) Yep the favorite stick needs the guides turned , I mean replaced .........
I've gone on record that ive never seen a rod with grooved guides, or even heard of specific examples.
I guess I can't say "never" anymore. I even took a screenshot.
So thank you for that. I guess it's not 100% fuji marketing BS after all.
👌, ok, the rod is solid glass, sorta pale, sunbleached lite green in color, hypalon foregrip and the buttcap had been missing for many years. It is a skiff rod, by western coastal standards.
Yes I even volunteered to lube the Longbeach reel. It's a great little winter indoor project.🎣
Hopefully it will get many more years of good service and keep the memories coming......
Quote from: JasonGotaPenn on September 20, 2021, 12:54:03 PM
I've gone on record that ive never seen a rod with grooved guides, or even heard of specific examples.
I guess I can't say "never" anymore. I even took a screenshot.
So thank you for that. I guess it's not 100% fuji marketing BS after all.
Don't turn off th BS detector just yet. These are not ceramic rings.
"Groovy" metal rings are quite common. Especially cheap chrome plated brass, but also stainless rings. Back in the days before ceramic guides, folks in the know would routinely check guides on larger saltwater rods for less visible grooves (but I have forgotten what the trick is). I found my first set of grooved all-metal guides when reloading a rod/reel that had frayed mono. The new line frayed while loading (duh). The grooves in the guides were not visible to the naked eye.
If have seen plenty of rings as bad as the one in Gary's photo. I expect that with the sinker sizes and current speeds encountered up there in Alaska , worn metal rings are pretty common.
Plenty of cracked ceramic rings in my life, but have yet to see a grooved ceramic ring, live or in a photo. Try scraping some sandpaper on a ceramic ring of a guide that you are going to toss. The stuff is amazingly hard. I think somebody here (Keith?) mentioned seeing wear in some very early first generation ceramics.
I think that there might be some argument that braid (especially coated braid), can theoretically pick up fine grit from being pulled through silt, and roughen up the ceramic ring surface a small amount. The guide companies claim that the the harder (and more expensive) ceramic rings will resist scratching better, but even the cheapest modern ceramics are so hard that I am skeptical that there is a practical difference.
The guide companies tout the difference in hardness and smoothness of high end vs low end ceramics, but have a lot less (i.e., nothing) to say about actual measurable perfomance differences or real life degradation of either.
-J
I've only ever seen the tiptop grooved like that using SS or monel wire trolling for stripers as a kid on Cuttyhunk. I remember some of the groove depths were twice the diameter of the wire The switch was to rollers or carballoy tips.
A good many years ago I built myself a boat rod hoping to double use for mono and stranded wire line, and initially built with ceramic lined guides, which ended up heavily grooved from the wire. Changed to Aftco rollers and it cured the problem. It was so long ago, that I can't even remember whether they were Fuji or not, but they certainly grooved and wrecked a holiday deep fishing with nylon.
Seen a lot of metal guides grooved with braids, even those ones with the thin sliver of stainless as an insert. For now, all braid rods will have higher end ceramic inserts.
I'm using Spectra with stainless insert guides and will be proud if I can ever make a groove of my own.
They say to drag a cotton ball or piece of nylon stocking through the guide to highlight a crack or groove.
Quote from: oc1 on September 22, 2021, 05:37:37 AM
I'm using Spectra with stainless insert guides and will be proud if I can ever make a groove of my own.
They say to drag a cotton ball or piece of nylon stocking through the guide to highlight a crack or groove.
That was the trick. Thanks.
If you want to wear out some metal rings, you need to wind under heavy load. It was more of a problem for larger saltwater rods.
And I never knew of the existence of the wind-on multistrand wire that Jeri mentioned. Can't imangine anything rougher on guides than that stuff on a trolling rod.
Always learning something new here.
-J
one of the oldies I bought, had braided copper on it... finally makes sense
This stuff wrecked more guides and tore up more hands , especially when it made it`s own fish hooks . .018 stranded 304 stainless steel wire .
JB Weld!!!
Back in the early 70's in British Columbia fishing salmon and sea run steelhead I used a VOGG rod and my DAM Quick 330 with 30lb Stren. My tip had multiple grooves in it.
I'm not sure if it's still popular, butt lots of trolling on the Great Lakes seemed to be with Monel, a single stainless steel wire. Plastic spools were not used on reels as they would split.
Aftco was making hardened steel rollers and aluminum frames for a while and that is what we used on the Columbia River fishing for sturgeon using 8 stranded stainless steel line and that was my introduction to crimping line ends instead of knots. The wire having a small diameter and low stretch was good for seeing the subtle bites as generally you had to set the hook in their odd shaped mouth.
Later spectra came into use and is now more popular.
The hardened roller never got worn as the stainless wire would take the wear.
The rod guides I showed maybe had Dacron used butt many years of monofilament in trolling.
Another point that might not be noticed is that in trolling the rod surges some especially with lead and flashers/dodgers and the line is sawing up and down the upper guides almost constantly adding to the problem of using "soft" guides. That's my 2cents upping the Annie.🎣
I think monel may get the most use currently in the Mid-Atantic and Chesapeake, dragging spoons or mojo's for stripers and blues.
Quote from: jurelometer on September 22, 2021, 07:40:50 AM
Quote from: oc1 on September 22, 2021, 05:37:37 AM
I'm using Spectra with stainless insert guides and will be proud if I can ever make a groove of my own.
They say to drag a cotton ball or piece of nylon stocking through the guide to highlight a crack or groove.
That was the trick. Thanks.
If you want to wear out some metal rings, you need to wind under heavy load. It was more of a problem for larger saltwater rods.
And I never knew of the existence of the wind-on multistrand wire that Jeri mentioned. Can't imangine anything rougher on guides than that stuff on a trolling rod.
Always learning something new here.
-J
It was particularly favoured on the south coast of the UK in deep waters with strong tidal flow, when bottom fishing for Cod in winter with big squid baits. It was a 7 strand stainless wire, and with it you could get close to using 50% less sinker weight to hold bottom, than with equivalent nylon. Deep dropping in 50 meters of high flow current was not fun with excess of 1 pound of lead, so the wire option became very popular, though did wreck some early ceramic inserts.
Later used it on jig rods in deep and high current situations where drifting was the only option, a small swivel was crimped to the end of the wire, and then 20 feet of appropriate strength nylon added to add a little elasticity to a near zero stretch situation.
Obviously the situation changed with the advent of braid, but even then the rods needed a change in construction to add a little flexibility into the blanks to allow some elasticity into the system. Something we learned quickly with the change to braid in our surf casting situation, the older designs of very stiff and high strength carbon blanks worked fine with nylon lines, but some even self destructed when used with braid, and the introduction of some lower strength and more flexible carbon into the blank design sorted the problem.
Decades ago while going to school in Seattle, I did note subtle grooving in my trout/steelhead/salmon rods especially the tip guides. I replaced them with carbide and agate insert guides(predecessor to ceramic inserts?). Only used a few agate insert guides because of cost.