Question: Spinning Rod Build

[Rivverrat]

  I've some experience now with several rod builds behind me. However only a couple spinning rods & they were ultra lite. 

Question when building a spinning rod on a blank that is normally used with a conventional reel does the line rating need to go down a level with the stripper guide being placed out so far from from the reel ?

Has any body experience using the smaller high framed guides ?  This would be using braid with 10' mono leader on 8' rod... Jeff

[oldmanjoe]

For the few that i have built ,yes you can use a smaller stripper guide. 
You have to take in consideration the spool diameter for the stripper diameter.
     Fore example 2.5 inch diameter spool i can use a 25 mm guide around 20 inches away      braid line .           braid or mono combination than i would use a 30 mm stripper


    The only  true way to find out is tape on the guides and do test casts and load the blank for the rest of the guide train

[thorhammer]

what lb test Jeff? I have found personally that whether a blank is spinning or casting is really a function of how i spline it  and what guides i use, no matter what the manufacturer says...I'm sure the fish didn't care... if I think you are in the 40lb range we discussed, put the stripper at standard distance. the blank will be fine, its a function of ideally funneling the coil with least amount of choking. you can go down a size in guide if using the Fuji Concept but personally I still like a big 50 or more on a big spinner and I go oversize the rest of the way....just me. Fuji used to make a 20 mm tip i cant get anymore, my preferred build was 50-30-25-20-20-20-20 tip. now its 50-30-25-20-16-16-16 tip.

my 0.02.

[oldmanjoe]

What are you building ?       8 foot surf rod?

[Swami805]

The line comes off the spool in a cone shape so ideally the 1st guide should go at the narrowest or point of the cone. In a perfect world that cone would be at the same point every cast so a small stripper guide would be ok. That's the theory anyway but I believe the cone isn't consistent depending of the force of the cast. Taping the guides and testing is the best way but it's time consuming. There's lots of good info on the web, worth a little research.

[happyhooker]

what lb test Jeff? I have found personally that whether a blank is spinning or casting is really a function of how i spline it  and what guides i use, no matter what the manufacturer says...I'm sure the fish didn't care... if I think you are in the 40lb range we discussed, put the stripper at standard distance. the blank will be fine, its a function of ideally funneling the coil with least amount of choking. you can go down a size in guide if using the Fuji Concept but personally I still like a big 50 or more on a big spinner and I go oversize the rest of the way....just me. Fuji used to make a 20 mm tip i cant get anymore, my preferred build was 50-30-25-20-20-20-20 tip. now its 50-30-25-20-16-16-16 tip.
...

Those are some humongous guides; must be talking saltwater.  To each his own; if it works....  But, I think you're right about the spinning vs. casting blank question--it's all in the build.  I've taken a steelhead casting rod, 8 ft., and rebuilt it as a freshwater spinning rod on a kind of modified Fuji New Concept; only had it on the water once last fall, but it shapes up to be a rod capable of very long casts, which is what I wanted.

Frank

[happyhooker]

The line comes off the spool in a cone shape so ideally the 1st guide should go at the narrowest or point of the cone. In a perfect world that cone would be at the same point every cast so a small stripper guide would be ok. That's the theory anyway but I believe the cone isn't consistent depending of the force of the cast. Taping the guides and testing is the best way but it's time consuming. There's lots of good info on the web, worth a little research.

Have never thought about the "force of the cast" factor; will have to ponder that.  It is work to tape, test cast, retape, etc.  There is something to the size of the line you will typically use as affecting the guide size.  The original Fuji New Guide Concept theory has been supplemented by the K-series guide (KR Concept) factors; I think I've even seen it expressed that the KR stuff is the braid line version of NGC.  The Anglers Resource site has a lot of info and some guide placement software as well.

I don't use braid and do not particularly care for the extra high frame guides the KR Concept envisions.  So, the old NGC is usually my starting point, using smaller guide sizes than would have been thought appropriate 20 years ago, with high frames but not so high as the Fuji Ks.  Usually end up with the butt guide about 20" or so in front of the reel spool, maybe a little further out with a long rod like an 8-footer.  Couple more reduction guides after that, sizing down to the final series of 4-6 guides that run out to the tip, usually around size 6s or so.

Frank

[Rivverrat]

what lb test Jeff? I have found personally that whether a blank is spinning or casting is really a function of how i spline it  and what guides i use,  

Yes I agree.  I have pretty much accepted this as a fact. However when you place a stripper guide out as far as needed from a spinning reel, in some cases you can lose a good bit of the rods power. Especially a slower action rod that has a lot of it's power in the bottom end of the blank.

I'm building 2 rods one will be using the Black Hole 10' Heavy, Surf 2 blank. Since this blanks line rating is already based on a spinning reel lay out I don't for see any issue.

The other rod will be a UC Elite 8' Wahoo. Being a UC Elite by design it is little more parabolic in its bend with a lot of power down low above the handle. With the stripper guide out farther from reel I just wonder if it will knock this rod down to a 30 or 40 lb. rod vs a being a 50 when done in a conventional lay out... I guess I will just have to do it & see. If the fella I'm building it for doesn't like it I'll re-wrap it & use it for one of my orphan Torque 12's.

A Quick 270 reel will go on both of these rods. Hopefully fishing 50 lb. line as max... Jeff

[Rivverrat]

  Usually end up with the butt guide about 20" or so in front of the reel spool, maybe a little further out with a long rod like an 8-footer.  Couple more reduction guides after that, sizing down to the final series of 4-6 guides that run out to the tip, usually around size 6s or so.

Frank

If I could get the 1st guide that close to the reel there would be no issue or question. But with this reel that will be used this I think would be a hard thing. My thoughts are the only way to move the stripper guide closer to the reel than usual to make use of the power that's lower in this blank is to use braid & a high riding guides... Jeff

[Jeri]

We build a lot of rods for the surf, both spinning/lure and bait type, and with the recent change to fixed spool reel (spinners) and braid, we have had a lot of success with Fuji's original recommendation for Low Rider guides. These were obviously designed for long rods, over 12' and have virtually cured all our problems with line wraps, ease of use and performance. The concept that they work with is to take the coils of line coming off the spool, and constrict them quite dramatically with a small 'stripper' guide - and then use the much smaller coiling line to flow through ever reducung sized rings - to virtually end up coming out at the rod tip with the line running straight. This is basically the older NCG design concept. This was recently developed further to the KR concept, with a more aggresive reduction phase in the guide reduction from 'stripper' to running guides.

One of the rods that we have had huge success with is a 12' 2-3oz blank, which we first built with traditional single leg big - cone of flight guides, it cast well enough but with a few line wraps round guides. We then buit it with 30 down K series guides to overcome the problems of the line wraps - still good, but the guides were doing their job of coreecting potential line wraps, and this caused hesitancy in the casts. We then built the rod with a high size 16 Low Rider and a couple of 12 & 10 Low Riders, followed by some fly rod single leg guides size 10 and 8. This hybrid design was awesome, distance just went through the roof, line flow was as smooth as could be wished for, and with a good cast we were getting over 130 metres with a plain 3oz sinker.

This became our standard for a long time, but recently we had time and revisited the design using the KR Concept, which now runs size 20, 10, 8 high frame guides and a string of 6 and 5 guides. Initially we were worried about the braid to braid leader knot ripping off all the very small guides, but when we started casting, it just became awesome. The 2 biggest factors were that the line flow was near silent, and distance had gone up by a further 10 metres - such was the efficiency of the guide style and set up.

The one thing that we did do with all these evolutions is to push the position of the first/stripper guide well up the rod, forget about 'line slap' - it doesn't have time to happen, but what we found does happen, is that we end up with a very small cone/coil of line approaching the first guide, that once the casts settles into main flight, actually extends back towards the handle - basically the guides are working in total harmony with the line and the reel. We only saw this the first time at night casting with a head lamp, but the action of this tunnel of line is what we now always look for in any new design or layout - guides and line working in harmony, rather than the older concept of forcing the line where the designer wants it to go.

I know these are examples of longer rods than you are planning, but we have used the exact same principles of line harmony with the high small guides of the KR Concept on much shorter rods. A recent design was for a client on the northern rivers of Namibia, where they fish from the banks for Tigerfish - he now has a 9' rod that will cast 2oz spoons over 110 metres - a very happy man. The first size 16 high guide is 30" up from the reel seat, and we considered that a little close, we might experiment with pushing it out to 36" to see if we can get more distance from the same blank.

Hope that all helps.

Cheers from sunny Africa.

[oldmanjoe]

   I have been testing with smaller guides and a further distance from the spool .    The only down fall is 8 -10 mph  cross winds throwing 1/4 -3/4 oz jig heads .
      Funny part is i find my self further away from the mangroves , just to keep from getting tangle up.   Almost back to blind casting..

[Rivverrat]

Thanks for that Jeri ! It is greatly appreciated !!

What size are the reel's spool on these rods your speaking of using the smaller guides with high frames ?  The spool size on the reels being used here are 71 mm. ...Jeff

[Rivverrat]

  I have been testing with smaller guides and a further distance from the spool .    

Waiting on guides I'm ordering 4 different stripper guides. Looking forward to playing around with it my self.

[oldmanjoe]

 I will also say that i try a set up with 3 different reels.   Penn with 44 mm spool ,Mitchel with 49 mm spool , Quick with 54 mm spool .
  My test   ground is a concrete light pole 72 yards away , it is amassing what little changes make .
  This is casting rigs ,  drop rigs i think you can change thing up ,closer and smaller because you line watching off the spool . Just my thoughts joe

[Jeri]

Thanks for that Jeri ! It is greatly appreciated !!

What size are the reel's spool on these rods your speaking of using the smaller guides with high frames ?  The spool size on the reels being used here are 71 mm. ...Jeff

On the long surf rods we have been using reels with spool diameter up to 90mm - so potentially a huge problem with big coils - but never had a line wrap - and that was only using 20 and 25 size high profile single leg rings, and using braid from 25lb right up to 50lb. On the shorter rods, the spools haven't been quite so drastic. But when we first started testing the idea, we wanted the absolute worse possible case to high light any problems.

Having already come from a design position of using Low Riders well up the rods, we didn't have any mental issues with using the KR rings a long way from the spool.

All the design concepts - Low Rider, NCG and KR all come from some early work done by the head of Fuji back in the 1960-70s, which developed into the Omura Theory - which basically came to the conclusion, that big eyes were a negative route to follow - small but tall eyes have much more control over line flow.

trange how we eventually go back to some quite old ideas.