Hello everyone,

I am starting on my first rod builds and I am looking to build some xh rods for flathead and blue cat fishing. I want to use black guides just for the overall color scheme, and my question is on guide durability. In the catfish world nowadays, everyone loses their mind over rods that have guides with inserts. Everyone is going with stainless guides without inserts. However, these are typically just available in chrome or smoke colors. I am looking at forecast su guides currently and just wanted to know if there is a significant difference now between the durability of guides with inserts and guides without? I know that pretty much every heavy duty saltwater rod out there has guides with inserts so I can't imagine that there is much of a difference but then again I have very little knowledge on the subject of rod building.

Thanks in advance for any input!

the only time I have had a insert fail was because of abuse or trying to reel something through the ring that didn't fit like a swivel,sinker, or being stepped on whacked against the side of the boat .
over all they are durable and will preform well I have rods that I built 30 plus years ago with ceramic insert guide rings and they are still as good as day one.
It is in how you care for your equipment

The best day to be alive is always tomorrow !!
Think out side the box when all else fails !!!
Wi.

Depends on what kind of person you are, if you want to fish in some seriously nasty stuff, banging your rod around amongst the rocks, stepping on it, falling on it, just throw it in the back of the truck and let it ride back there with the oil cans and funnel from the last two oil changes, a spare wheel , and the alternator you replaced a year ago, go with the no insert guides.
If you take reasonable care of your rods, you can run anything you want. I've never had a guide fail that wasn't totally my fault, and I had to work at it to break it. Ceramic guides have been around since before WW II, if they didn't have their place they wouldn't be marketing them. I'm right now replacing some no insert guides off a Berkeley rod with ceramic insert guides, all the no insert guides are grooved from fishing line. The rod's 3 years old and owned by a not particularly avid angler, by contrast my Berkeley Series One rod same length and power, fished to death with the factory SiC insert guides shows it's 30 years of use with zero guide failures.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2017 06:13PM by Spencer Phipps.

As you hear above, most of the criticism of insert guides is their loss of the insert, usually through some type of misuse. For you application, go ahead and use them and take care of them.

Thanks for the reply's! I will just be building some rods for myself and my brother and I take good care of my gear and even have a pvc rod rack inside of my suv to transport rods without damaging them so like everyone said above sounds like I should be good to go with the forecast guides.

You could step up to the Alps guides with recessed rings.

Use a towel or other method to pad your rods and prevent them from being free to shift and rattle around in the tube.

I am of the view that stainless guides for some applications are actually superior to others. For years (decades actually) I considered that the higher quality the insert, the more I wanted the guide on any rod I built. Not so any more, even if I can babythe rod (as I do).

For applications where even modest violence is going to happen: like falling and smacking the rod on a rock while wading (think trout/salmon/smallmouth), the rod falling out of a secure rod rack and hitting the deck (such as on long range boats), travelling to distant countries where rod failure was not an option, are all situations where stainless guides excel. They will take a licking and keep on ticking. Catfishing to me seems like one of those situations.

Think the adage "Perfect is the enemy of good enough".