spoonplugger1

Scrimless design has been around for some time, the Hydra Fishing site explains it pretty well, they've been scrimless for many years. No lateral layup is necessary now days, that also decreases blank modulus, they are trying to negate that with srimless construction.

Just the reason, d-cam, the reason G Loomis doesn't use micro guides is they have no idea how you're going to use the rod, with what line, etc. Micro guides came out of the custom rod market where the builder knows exactly the answers to who, what, when, where and how? You don't know those answers you build the "Jack of All Trades, Master of None" rod. It's really visible in the spinning rod market, they use the latest guides, they just don't use them in the correct way, as they have no idea which reel and line is being used. Like I said earlier, Gary Loomis has never had anything against small guides, he uses the smallest REC guides he can get away with on the Black Widow rods. So do I on my rods, weight is more important than just about anything else, weight off the tip is more important still.

I don't know, I have no problem with reamer sizes, go to your neighborhood garage sales, buy that old beater large butt fiberglass rod in the corner for a buck, go to your hardware store and buy a small can of Weldwood contact cement and a roll of medium grit emory cloth, strip the rod except for the rear grip that makes a nice free handle, put the contact cement on the rod and emory cloth and let it tack dry, than spiral the tape up the rod blank. You now have a very good reamer that will last forever and you can use right away. Some of my reamers are 3 ft. long, much easier to store one than a bunch of little ones and easier to find one that does the job of three little ones. One thought though Sloppy, on a crankbait rod the rod in used wiith the tip down, along with most other presentations. A balanced rod here is of little importance as the pull of the lure while retrieved overrides everything. Many of the pros that use custom rods will have shorter rear grip lengths than you expect because they know every bit of rod length in front of the hand is improving castability, the reason they went to a long rod in the first place, everything behind the hand is an expensive stick and of little use, most will not exceed a 9 inch rear grip length even on 8 ft. rods and many are in the 8 to 8 1/2 inch length on 7 ft rods, mine are 8 inch, more than enough of my fore arm is anchoring the rod, at least for me. Just someting to think about and try maybe. Many posts in forums say they installed a 20 inch grip, this is the length of all the grips and the reelseat, great in the catalog, worthless to builders, or someone trying to learn. A 16 mm seat is 1 inch shorter than an 18mm seat, one model in the catalog may have a 2 inch foregrip, or a 4 inch one listed in a 20 inch discription, see what I mean? Much better to break it down so people can use the information correctly. Just another obscure thought while I wait for the morning coffee to kick in. Have a great Father's Day Dads.

Found this oldie but goldie with so much mis-information it's mind boggling. G Loomis before Shimano used micro guides all the time, for decades, they were called match guides, used in Europe since WW2, Japan since a little after that. When the first Japanese long spool reels hit the US the Shimano Aero reels also came with a series of Aero rods with match guides. Fuji made match guides in double.foot and single foot versions into the 90's, the flyweight series, now they have come back in with the KL-H series. Fuji F-frames micro guides have never been the strongest, they were the worst for many years of production where they were used by us custom builders before the re-introduction of the K series Fujis. the Pacific Bay, Batson, and Alps guides were always more reliable and used for well over a decade before the KRs here in the US, much longer overseas. Of all these guides, including the weak Fujis before the KRs, you could hang an 8 lb downrigger weight off the guide without deflecting let alone bending, or breaking one. The others were beefier, 12 lbs can hang off them. The problem with the older Fujis were they were built with frames like he Alconite LAGs, and the proportional downsizing left to little material to take any abuse at the bend itself from the user. Worked fine during fishing. Six 3 mm guides weight the same as one 6 mm guide, that's nothing to sneeze at if you are trying to make the lightest, most sensitve and best balanced rods. 10 lb braid to fluoro leader knots fly right through my guides.

Rod tapers aren't a bit linear, they are exponential in nature. In this instance very close to pi multiplication. If you use the same amount of material, but double the diameter it gets 9 times stiffer, 3.1416 times 3.1416. That's the reason fiberglass rods are all larger diametered, they use thin walls and large diameters to get max stiffness with the least weight to compensate for less modulus. This is also done with graphite, the Lamiglas Perigee 5/6 fly blanks are the same 1/2 inch diameter as the 9 wt. and some of the XMG blanks/rods come to mind.

First off, I built my first rod on a G Loomis IMX blank and have never regretted it, almost 40 years later and I still use that rod a lot. There is nothing you can do to the blank that can't be fixed. Take your time, pay attention to fit and finish, and clean up after yourself as you go and you'll do fine, it's not rocket science. The other way, you blow a bunch of money on a rod you'll probably not enjoy and use. It's not really a new design, the Seeker React rods/blanks have been around a long time, the concept has been in the Seeker line up for even longer. Lamiglas has been doing it even longer, the Triflex rods. The new NFC Delta rods sound similar, and the Judge blanks are US made, NFC blanks were distributed through Batson, Hmm. Anyway, the Judge blanks are pretty nice, the backbone of MH seems to be much closer to the old RX7 CB heavy power, the overwrap I think has something to do with it, the tip is lighter than the RX7 MH tip. In other words you should do fine. I also use my RX7 heavy power, 8 ft crankbait rods for salmon fishing, and my Judge rods make excellent trolling rods for stripers.

The 8 ft. blank would be a bit whippy because it is a moderate action blank designed for cold water smallmouth fishing using the float and fly method, as the name implies, little hooks/light lines and a soft rod that protects same. It was never designed for jigging. The 76MLXF mentioned has a very soft tip, approaching ultralight power that locks up quickly and finishes with good backbone. Tackle Tour tested the rod and gave it rave reviews and their Enthusist Award if I remember right. I built the 1 piece version some years ago and it is one of the rods I use a lot for many species and techniques.

I wouldn't build on a 2 wt. blank, any spinning guide combo would over power the blank big time let alone any decent blue gill. At best this is a dink rod, unless there is some specific technique that required so limber a rod. Can you catch bass, crappie, bluegills, etc. on a light fly rod? Yep, I've done it, but everything used to do it had to be downsized and specific to the task, nothing approaching normal tackle would work. Go with the REVIP70UL mentioned above, kissing cousin to the IP and XP blanks of earlier times and a superb blank for many fish besides blue gills. You pick the technique and fish with like sized tackle this blank will do it. This blank has a faster taper than you'll see in store bought ultralight rods.

Replace it.

The fiberglass sleeve should overlap the two pieces by at least 6 times the diameter of the pieces put in the sleeve. As Mick said the fiberglass has the durability and flexibility to repair the rod. I fully overwrap the sleeve and rod pieces on both sides for added assurance like you would wrap a ferrule for the same reason. Garage sales are a great place to find old, inexpensive glass rods you can use for repairing other rods, just found a weel cared fro Roddy rod and Daiwa reel last week for $3.

Any quality sporting goods store has tip tops and they usually will replace them for little if any fee other than the price of the tip top.

I have many NFC rods, love them, no problems. That said, I spent quite a bit of time with the company before buying in to get a feel for any changes over the years from the G Loomis days, I circumvented many issues others have had. Helps to live within 40 miles. The new website is far better than the original I had to work with, so hopefully this will help new customers.

Scrimless is nothing new, nor does scrim add a bunch of weight, it's the new resin system that makes the big difference.

I doubt they're carbon fiber with that pattern, I think it may be silk screened on much like an oversized version of cobra pattern that used to be available from Fuji.

Carbon wrap over glass has been around for decades, a great concept. Using glass in the tip where you need durability, without sacrificing a lot of extra weight, because your not using a lot of material. Same reason multi-modulus graphite rods work so well.

At what position are you going to balance the rod? To my way of thinking it should be the position you're going to fish. See lots of people balance to the horizontal where the rod's balance is naturally at it's worst, than fish it closer to the vertical where the rod's balance point is the distance horizontally measured between the tip's position and your hand. Makes the need for far less weight to get the job done. Second thought, just how much do you have to do to a rod that is fishing a short line? Just what about Mr Bucket Mouth are you not going to feel that's different? Third thought that we custom rod builders ask? By how much? If you messing about, spending time doing all these extra steps, how much better is the rod really going to be? Can you really feel a difference, or should you just build the rod as light as you can and go fish it? I follow the light rod side of things, I have fished both and I can't say the balanced rod was any advantage, and I know from building identical rods, the custom way I learned from many others vs what you see on the rack, there is a huge difference to be had in balance and pitching performance by thinking outside the box.

Batson made some fine suggestions, as did grub man, Batson's RX6 blanks are more technique specific than most blanks in their price range. Get Bit's first brand, the one they made a name as an international company was with was Batson products, I've been using the line for near 20 years I think, they only get better as the years go by. Customers, family and myself all have rods built on their blanks in all the series, not one bad build, or dissatified customer.

I'm with you Basscatcher, many times people only buy rods because someone in a magazine, tv show, etc. recommended them, and this goes for all species. What never seems gets discussed in rod selection is what your fishing from, and how critical that is to your presentation? Went back to the Midwest for a visit, and brought my old walleye rods with me. The friend I went fishing with was fishing 7 ft.rods, when I fished there the one rod everyone had to have in their boat was a 6 ft. jigging rod. When I asked him why he was using the longer rod he gave me a bunch of reasons that made no sense to me since he was fishing from the same style boat. The reason rods had gotten longer was because the boats had gotten bigger, wider, and taller. His boat hadn't, he could still stick a 6 ft. rod over the side of the boat from the tiller position, he was using a set up now that was almost 50 % heavier counting the larger reel than he used to use. Since the same has happened in bass fishing and most presentations are down tip it makes sense that some presentations would use longer rods, but if your fishing from a smaller, lower boat, especially from the floor of a johnboat these rods are going to be a hinderance.

I'm with Mick, making a blank statement about any rod from anybody with zero reason, or discription doesn't make much sense, bordering on a troll posting.

Look like Pacific Bay Minimas to me.

On the blind hole type butts you simply bore the hole in the butt to the blank end diameter and glue it on, any minor fit and finish problem at the front of the butt grip will/can be covered with a check, or you can butt up against it with a thread wrap and put finish over it.

The white is where the epoxy has lifted off the thread. Sometimes filling the area with a thin finish like water based urethane varnish will decrease the spot because it will flow into the cavity, much thinner than epoxy. I use a sharp toothpick to get it only in the crack. I wouldn't fix a new rod, have it fixed, or replaced.

Thanks Lyman.

After reading everyone's comments today on the paint removal on the blank, I asked myself if I've ever tried to mask off an area and just remove that paint, and I haven't, not on a door or furniture either. Anyone had good results?

Casting guides are a different kettle of fish, lots of great guides out there and you don't need to spend a lot to get a good guide/rod. This is where you should ask "how much"? Truth be told, the difference between world class and mediocre is maybe 2%, or less. Now you add the truth that any rod you pick off the shelf will cast further than you can reliably get a hookset, get a consistently good presentation, and really feel the fish in it's environment at it's best and you end up with, "what will make the lightest, most sensitive, and FUN rod to fish?" Micro guides in a spiral wrap are a great option, and cost less than the bigger guides, so unless your tying leaders on your braid, using extraordinarily large knots, it's something to look at.