It presumes that someone binding on guides knows more about the subject than the manufacturer who has spent heaps on getting the design right in the first place.
Actually, that's not the case; Fuji were recommending the stripper guide be reversed on casting rods since they first brought out the new frame style. I wrote the following six years ago for Western Angler magazine, if you want to wade through it:
" It's long been known that in these guides with two legs on one side and one leg on the other, there are less casting tangles to be had around the first guide if it is put on the rod back to front; ie with the double legs facing the tip. A few people used to do it, but it did look weird and didn't make much difference, so you never saw it much. However with these latest guides - MN and Low Rider - it makes more difference than before, and even Fuji are saying that's how you should use them.
It never seemed logical that the line could tangle around that first guide. After all, the line is coming from below it and being pulled through by a weight on the far side of it. It's getting pulled through very fast and has to be dragged off the reel, so how does it have time to knot around the guide?
I got hold of a video a while back that had some quite interesting footage. It probably had some pretty interesting audio too, but it was in Japanese, which does us no good. It was done by Fuji, and they set up a couple of different rods and line types against a black background, to be filmed with a high-speed camera. A caster, using a separate rod, launched a weight that was also attached to the filmed rod's line, and the way the line flowed off the reel and through the guides was studied in slow motion.
One thing it showed was that because of the longer double legs on the Low Rider frame (LCSG), having the double legs toward the reel interfered with the flow of the line through the first guide ring; having the double legs towards the tip allowed the line cleaner entry into the ring.
It also showed braid line flowing off a spinning reel much smoother than nylon, except when loose loops of line got picked up and flew off into a guide wrap and a break-off. They showed that with the old high frames, but not with Low Riders. Make that mean what you will.
But the really interesting bit was how the line flowed through, around, over and all about that first guide at the start of the cast. In some of the sequences there would have been half a metre of line on the far side of the stripping guide that had not yet passed through the guide! Even coming off a spinning reel, there was enough momentum in the line to throw bundles of line past the first guide, faster than it could be pulled through. Then, like cracking a whip, it threw an S-shape and overshot the guide on its way back down again, heading back towards the reel faster than it was going up through the guides. With more line still pouring up, a conflagration of line would seem to be an apt description. Throwing a tangle around that guide was entirely understandable, and if a shock leader was involved, the hinging and catch points provided by knots and different thicknesses of line would make it inevitable.
However the footage of the Low Rider showed a smoother passage of line, and the line that overshot the frame did not appear able to hang up on the frame on the way back because of the long sloping legs pointing to the tip. Once through that first guide, it was smooth sailing. The line was almost running straight.
Now remember, the video is Fuji propaganda and we haven't tried these guides yet, but we can see what they're trying to achieve; and presumably they wouldn't be making a lot of noise about how they've done it if they weren't at least closer than before."
I'll agree it's pointless on jig rods.
