Does anyone know of a roller tip that can be used with a spiral wrapped rod? The reason for the roller is the radius more than the roller. Trolling four hundred to five hundred feet of wire line with 16oz. weight tends to put a bend in the wire where it rests in the tip. On my conventional wrapped rods with a roller tip the bend does not form. Any ideas?

All American Guides may have what you're looking for. Link to the left.

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[www.allamericanrollerguides.com]

In particular the @#$%& - roller tip for spiral wrapped rods.

Do a search for a "Twilly Tip". They are designed for wire and can be used as either a guides on top or spiral setup. They are not pretty, but very effective on wire. Used on tons of Great Lakes wire line trolling rods. The All American tip also works for wire, but I have found it beneficial to wrap a 6mm SIC guide on the tube to keep the wire in the roller groove. Sounds like a Lake Trout "Thumper" rod?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2014 08:36PM by Tony Childs.

Yes, the rods are used for deep trolling for Macks sitting on the bottom. I ordered a couple of each suggestion. See which we like the best. Thanks for the help.

How deep are the Macks?

How deep are the Macks?

Depending on the time of the year they are 100' to 300'. Sometimes during the spring they will come into the shallow water (30' to 50') but not often. We have fished for them some days when they have marked at 400'.

The wire works well with dipsy divers at those depths. For lakers, we drag the divers literally pounding the bottom. They leave a debris trail that attracts the lake trout. What kind of bait or terminal tackle takes your fish? Sorry, off topic, but very curious about a technique similar to what we do here in Michigan.

We do pretty much the same except we use 10 to 16 ounce weights depending on the depth. The bottom here is rocky with areas of sand between the ridges of rocks which are very steep. If you can bouce your weight off the rocks and into the sand ( without hanging up) where the fish lay and eat you are almost always going to get bit. Mostly fish with live minnows. Flatfish, Apex lures, Silver Horde and any minnow like Rebel are effective. These are fished behind a dodger or large flasher such as a Cousin Carl or a Luhr Jensen lake troll.

Sounds fun. It is identical to our lake trout tactics, except no rocks, just sand. Yep, we pull Luhr Jense Dodgers with spin-n-glows behind, sometimes flys. Very cool, thanks for the info.

If you go with the Twili, you want to check where the end of the spiraled wire is. I can't say for sure but I think the MFG orients the end of the wire (on purpose) to be near or at the top when the Twili is attached in the normal upright position. When you use the Twili in a spiral configuration this places the end at the bottom where your wire line passes by. I've heard reports of wire line outright breaking, and reports of premature coiling caused by the wire line rubbing over or by the end of the coiled wire.

I buy about 10 at a time and check each one and separate the ones where the coiled wire doesn't end on (or near) the 180 axis when upside down. I use these for spiral builds and I use the ones on axis for normal non spiral builds.

As to the All American N e p t u n e guides (have to type it like that or the forum stars ***** it out for some reason), They work pretty well, but they are not swiveling guides, so that is something to consider. I've contacted a number of MFG about producing swiveling undermount rollers but the potential sales are too limited to cover the engineering expenses. There used to be a brand of swiveling undermount rollers available, but the brand name escapes me at the moment. I have an ALCOR wire line rod that has these guides (both swiveling tip and runner rollers), but lent it out and it's not readily available to check. I did an internet search in the past but could not find a lot of info on them.

Here's some older online info on the ALCOR rod/reel combo. Check out page 10 - you can see the swivel roller tip info there - mine is different in that it has rollers all the way
[www.bpspinners.com]

This tip is ideal for wire. The roller is large enough that it doesn't cause the wire to curl and it swivels. Neither the Twili or the N e p t u n e work as well as this one does.

Larry, a question if I might. What's your blank of choice for this application?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2014 01:25PM by John E Powell.

John, thanks for the tip on the tip, I'll check the coil location.

Those ALCOR rods and reels resemble the reels that my Dad made years ago back in the 1950's. He was a machinist and made large reels that were ten and twelve inch diameter from aluminum. They mounted on the rod in a conventional manner and were a real bear to keep in an upright position. The reason for the reel on top was because of the quality of the stainless and copper wire in those days, it would not wind around a small diameter reel spool without a huge birds nest. If the reel were mounted on the bottom you would have to reel backward, not good. The angle from the butt guide to the reel was too great.

I bought four blanks I used for these rods about twelve years ago and can't remember the numbers. I built two conventional and two spiral. They are St. Croix 8' fiberglass blanks listed at that time as catfish blanks. They are two piece moduate action medium power. They have been discontinued and I can't find any St. Croix fiberglass blanks listed anywhere. I need to build four more and am thinking about using Rod Geeks SG79HM blanks but I'm still planning. Hard to find good fiberglass blanks that have fairly small butt diameters. Any suggestions?

Thanks again

John, thanks for the tip on the tip, I'll check the coil location.

Those ALCOR rods and reels resemble the reels that my Dad made years ago back in the 1950's. He was a machinist and made large reels that were ten and twelve inch diameter from aluminum. They mounted on the rod in a conventional manner and were a real bear to keep in an upright position. The reason for the reel on top was because of the quality of the stainless and copper wire in those days, it would not wind around a small diameter reel spool without a huge birds nest. If the reel were mounted on the bottom you would have to reel backward, not good. The angle from the butt guide to the reel was too great.

I bought four blanks I used for these rods about twelve years ago and can't remember the numbers. I built two conventional and two spiral. They are St. Croix 8' fiberglass blanks listed at that time as catfish blanks. They are two piece moduate action medium power. They have been discontinued and I can't find any St. Croix fiberglass blanks listed anywhere. I need to build four more and am thinking about using Rod Geeks SG79HM blanks but I'm still planning. Hard to find good fiberglass blanks that have fairly small butt diameters. Any suggestions?

Thanks again

Larry,

I've always wanted to get my hands on the American Tackle AXWT66M / Pac Bay X2WT66M-B. They're a bit shorter and slow action, but I wonder how one might work with an extension. At least in theory, the action should be more moderate that way. The power would be a bit more than the Rod geeks SG79HM you mentioned (I'd like to handle one of those myself) My intuition tells me this may be too powerful though. I'm hoping that I can get Don Morse to convince the boys at American Tackle to bring one along to next year's show in NC, neither AT or PB bring those particular model for display and examination.

The other thing I want to experiment with is possibly trimming the tip on a MHX DR845 which has a very nice action. That's a really nice blank and very inexpensive, it might be altered to serve that purpose well.

Larry,

I just came across a new tip. It's really expensive, but also very slick. Check this out:

[www.stradabay.com]