spoonplugger1

Thread will still be my choice, this stuff doesn't stretch, so how will it hold the guide in place? It may work for fishing tension and angles, but how will it do in a snaggy rod locker or when on deck with all the things that happen? It also has a lifespan before it is no longer viable, much, much shorter than stretchy thread that holds the guide firmly to the blank.

I encourage everyone to build rods they believe make them a better fisherman, confidence is a big factor in fishing at your best. I would just say there is no reason to not know for sure if what you are doing with any rod is what is best for you, there is no need to begin building a rod, or finishing it without testing your assumptions, the butt cap in this instance can go on at any time, it doesn't need to be permanently on there to fish the rod. Another option is the Alps DBE balancing system, you just add or subtract discs to get your balance or put none in at all and you only have added the minor weight of the hardware involved to make it work, either way you have a nice, finished result when you're done.

Since the rod was designed for treble baits and you usually fish those in a tip down presentation why would adding weight to the rod be an advantage? Most presentations are tip down so most rods don't need balancing, even so I don't add extra weight to any rod, as rods get longer, basic physics takes over, and they all are going to be tip heavy. Moving baits negate the tip heavy feel in use due to the drag they produce.

Maybe 220 years ago you saw gold starting to go out of favor here in the US as a frame color, the Fuji guides and the cheaper guides found on Bass Pro/Cabelas/ etc. rods turned green fairly easily. Pac Bay's Ti plasma coatings in gold, bronze, etc. were a better guide for intermittent salt/brackish water uses and if I had to use a colored guide this is where I bought them. Even their black was a Ti compounded guide. I have a rare Seeker Super Seeker carbon/S glass salmon rod I built on the Ti Bronze guides that has done very well over the last 20 years of use.

D is substantial bigger, especially on the tip section where your eye does natural comparisons of ratios. It wraps a bit faster but not any stronger due to the number of wraps per inch difference evening things out. G Loomis and many others use B thread and have done so for many decades, I found B thread to be handy when I was doing decorative wraps. A thread is far easier to come by and is similar to 40 wt. polyester embroidery thread if you are looking for a increase in color variety, many more colors in metallics there, Fuji thread is a poly, much more UV protective and they hold colors much better than nylon. NFC by the way is selling Gudebrod thread in an agreement with the family to produce it, not all the colors are there yet, but there are quite a few popular ones back.

I have used American Tackle guides on rods for maybe 25 years, none have failed, what you are seeing is that Mudhole/CRB/AmTack were all bought by another company that wants to go their own way and are clearing out discontinued or redesigned products in the future.

WRB-2.0, Let's say you have a fish at the boat, going to lip him, net him, whatever. when you hold that rod in one hand and go for the fish, that rod is locked in the upright position, no matter where you choke up on the rod to reach the fish, it's not trying to spin in your hand, it's stable. A real advantage on longer rods, no need to highstick and break a rod when you can just shorten your reach.

Thanks for the heads up Florida.

I prefer left handed handle reels, I want to have control of the rod as soon as the lure hits the water, I have many times had something nail my offering before it even sinks all the way especially in shallow water. Switching hands than is not my favorite move, and my right hand is stronger, and through repeated use my most reactive hand. Reels were built right handed in the early days because they were direct drive or had a very slow multiplier system so the 6% average speed increase using your dominant hand was an obvious advantage, I don't think it matters much anymore with the reels of today. The only caveat I can think of is flipping sticks, I don't want my handle on the same side as my presentation due to handle interference issues with the line in my hand. I also like flipping switch reels for that, I think they may be harder to find now, the last I found was a KVD reel some years ago.

When you are doing guide spacing, no matter the rod or type, load the rod with one line that is attached to the tip top that puts your permanent bend in the rod. now string your guides on the reel line and thread the line thru the tip top. This lets you set your guides with no real load on them as you only put enough weight or load on the line to keep it straight while you mess around with the guides, I use something like a 1/2 oz. weight. One thing not brought up yet, take any rod you have and place the tip on the ceiling, wall, floor, etc. and flex it, notice how the very tip of the rod doesn't bend no matter what you do? If that part of the rod isn't bending just what advantage is it to put a guide in that area? No bend, no real load. I see a lot of guides 3 inches or so from the tip, they aren't there to support the blank's load and put weight where you least want it.

A spiral rod has been around for over 100 years, I first read about it in an old book printed in 1908 if I remember right. The spiral is doing nothing the rod doesn't want to do on its own when you load it. If a spinning rod isn't blowing up due to lack of guides or increased guide spacing the spiral won't either. If you play with your spiral wrapped rod, looking at flex, loading, etc. you'll see there is very little real difference in line path, guides on top follows a longer arc path. A lighter tip due to the number of guides responds and straightens faster with decreased oscillations to mess with the line path during the cast. If you put the spiral on the handle side the reel will protect the guides better, because of the handle it rolls less in that direction and it rises off the deck protecting the guides if it does.

Take out your Dremel add a small burr on it and with a light massage your BB25SW should fit, after all saltwater reels have always had an issue with freshwater designed reel foot seats, the SW reels usually have a wider foot if not longer one also. Abus 6500 and smaller, and the newer SW palmable reels usually have the FW reel foot. Surprised a low end rod like your Rogue River Special had that seat, Lamiglas and G Loomis used that reel seat on their high end rods pretty exclusively, IM700, Esprit/XMG50 for Lamiglas, IMX and GLX for G Loomis. Learn something new all the time, the reel seat with its round threads and all metal nut is an expensive seat compared to others. It's still a high end option for rods that use it.

When through blank construction became the norm, American engineering came up with the solution for round reel users that smoothly transitioned to super comfortable palming as low frame reels became available. See how the offset reel seat similarly raised the hand closer to the top of the reel. This design is still used today.

I've has lever drag reels for 40 years, I don't see the benefit advertised, if you have to reset the strike drag it's much more of a pain then a star drag, to go past strike drag you have to depress the button to move the lever past, not a big benefit over a simple star drag adjustment. But to each their own.

No gap means no glue to do the job, if you have a drill set that also has the plastic drill gauge you are in business, drills are also sized in 1/64th inches, if you can't fit it or it doesn't go down far enough you are a half size larger, being too big is way obvious and easy to test by going down one. Sometimes they are free or dirt cheap, much cheaper than the plastic tip top gauges but you can go through a box of tip tops and size them right with a tip top gauge.

Thinking your rod needs to be balanced, to me is wrong thinking, if this was a priority than make it easy on yourselves and build short rods that balance much better on their own, the longer you go the bigger the problem will always be, you can't overcome physics, you have to remember the more mass involved the more energy involved starting and stopping the motion of casting and the further this weight is away from your hand on both sides the more energy expended. Now let's look at the rod world in general, are people worried about balance on saltwater rods? Salmon/steelhead rods that start at 7 1/2 and go to 13 ft? Musky rods to 9 ft? It goes on and on, what is different about your fishing techniques that require the extra weight and effort that are not found in these other species that use the same general lures? These people are throwing heavier weighted lures all day long too, I can't remember a day bass fishing that made me feel near as fatigued as a day flyfishing salmon, fishing for musky, etc. Walking in a free stone stream in current is far more fatiguing than standing on a boat, so is keeping your footing in seas you'll never see inland for instance. I hear all the time, "Well I'm casting and retrieving, jigging, flipping all day". Well welcome to the rodeo pal!

As noted not all reels are built the same, the amount of reel mass in front and behind the stem along with size can easily affect balance, reel size also as can along with how many fingers you put in front of the stem as you fish, after all the Skamania Grip on steelhead/salmon rods was developed to use the reel as a counterweight to the rod's length to improve balance.

Things have indeed changed.

Something that isn't mentioned about the finish, unless things have dramatically changed, I looked into the CTS finish when it first was introduced some years ago, the cost made coffee shoot out my nose when I was told what it was. MANY times, more than any other finish at the time.

The PB blanks like many other of the new designs are scrimless designs, in other words they don't use a high-quality glass or paper carbon scrim to increase the hoop strength, the resistance to blow up when bent excessively. When you bend a rod you have two bend arcs, the outer edge and inner edge of the bend, two things can happen, the outer, longer bend can stretch and inner bend compress, or the blank can ovalize trying to make the two bends the same, ovalizing is the easiest obvious result for the blank, if you don't reinforce this area with scrim then the tip to butt running fiber and the bonding resin has to do the job. Scrimless is lighter, retains more of the longitudinal fibers' modulus, you have to use higher end fibers and resin to make this work, NFC, PB, Hydra and I'm sure others have scrimless designs.

Same thing has happened to me Mick on the one Point Blank I built and the 3 G Loomis GLX rods I have. All supposed to be tender rods, yet the newest GLX I own is a SJR9000S-3 and it's 25 years old, no problems whatsoever on any of them and other than the PR8444C they have spent an awful lot of time fishing in Alaskan bush and other places the SJR being my flats rod, trout, char, steelhead and smaller salmon rod.

I found three blanks, in stock, in the same spot with a five minute look. At least according to their inventory. You want me to mention it here or by other means? Honestly the info to find these is on the Point Blank site and a few clicks away on their listing of dealers. I just happen to know a few less traveled dealers, good stuff to know when looking for things. The Point Blank design is larger diameter with thinner walls to get things stiff fast with the least amount of weight, great except they are more tender to abuse. A brandy snifter and a beer mug may weigh the same, but which will survive a drop best?

Without more info we can't help, circumstances change with different reel seats.

We have been using a quesstimation, for about 15 years now, maybe a bit longer, take your ERN number and put a line under it and a 16, the fraction your see seems to get us pretty close to your max lure rating no matter what the company says.

The reason above is why general descriptions are useless, the blanks above wouldn't be classified as finesse in my part of the woods, rods in 12 - 14 CC Data scale would be a finesse rod.