Rod guides and rod performance

[buffalo7]

I was wondering if any of you have an opinion about rod guides. I stopped useing snake guides in the late 70s when building rods. I built a rod for a friend, and decided to use unconventioal guides. I used Aetna Foulfroof guides, ( gold rod on top of the pic below ) when I took the rod out to test it, I didn't wont to give it up, the way the line shot through the guides compared to the snake guides. The Aetna Foulproof guides are no longer available, I use single foot guides now.

What made me think of this is when I was reading a thread, and pcray was talking about two like rods, one was a Sage and the other was a G Loomis, and how the G Loomis out casted the Sage. I have a 6 1/2ft. Orvis and G Loomis and it's the same story, The G Loomis out performs the Orvis by a long shot. The Orvis rod uses snake guides and the G Loomis uses single foot guides like I use when I build rods. In the case of the Sage rods, even though I look at them when I'm in a fly shop I don't remember if they use snake guides or not.

The rods in the pic below are from top to bottom:
Coustom Glass 6' with Aetna Foulproof guides
Coustom 8' graphite with single foot guides
G Loomis 6 1/2' 3wt. single foot guides
Orvis 6 1/2' 4wt. with snake guides

 

[afishinado]

I've built a few rods and lately have used single foot guides. Single foots have less wrapping and theoretically less weight, but I really don't see any diference between them for casting or shooting line. I own all three rods Sage, Loomis and Orvis. The Sage and Orvis have snakes and the Loomis has SFs. No big deal either way.

 

[Fishidiot]

I agree with Afish.

I build pretty much all my fly rods and usually use single foot guides simply because they're easier to wrap. I don't know if they effect casting performance. Honestly, I'm not very sophisticated about the casting performances of different rods/lines etc (and consider this issue much over-rated). One thing I have discovered is that I like bigger guides and use a large tip top on many of the rods I build as I find that bigger guides allow knots and joints in the fly line to pass through a bit better. Give me a big stripper guide and a big tip-top; whether the rest of the guides are snake or SF, doesn't seem to matter much to me.

 

[PennKev]

Guide spacing and number plays a roll in how well line shoots. You may have done a particularly good job of determining the needed number and placing of the guides on this rod.

Kev

 

[jayL]

If you take two identical blanks, one with snakes and one with single foots, the snake guides will theoretically make for a stiffer rod. Weight is also marginally higher with snakes.

Otherwise, I see no performance differences. And the above two aren't detectable to me, at least from what I have experienced. Ease of wrapping is the key.

The foulproof guide seems to me that it wouldn't flex. Is that the case? If so, I'd imagine they would stiffen the rod up quite a bit.

 

[buffalo7]

jayL wrote:


The foulproof guide seems to me that it wouldn't flex. Is that the case? If so, I'd imagine they would stiffen the rod up quite a bit.

The rod I built with the foulproof guides was made from a 7' glass ultra lite spinning rod blank. (noodle rod) I cut it to 6'. the rod rod will flex into the handle on a back cast with no line so I could afford a little stiffness. I built it back in the 70s when H.L. Leonard and orvis were battleing it out for the lightest bamboo rods, one I think had the featherweight and the other the flyweight or fleaweight, but at the time 4wt. was the lightest I could get and it will load the rod in short cast, I believe it's about as light as any commercial rod made as far as line weight.

There was another brand of guide like the foulproof that was called Shooting Star but no longer availible. There is a company now that makes that style guide but useing a different material, they are called recoil guides, they come in snake guides also but name recoil referres to the way thy flex and pop back into shape. I've heard some negitives about them, mostly in big surf rods where the guides flex to mutch when casting heavy weight.

 

[jayL]

I have seen the recoil guides. I believe they are stock on the orvis helios line. They are pretty cool.