September 18, 2012
By Ned Kehde
For about eight years, Luke Clausen of Spokane Valley, Washington, has been an unshakable devotee of REC Component's Recoil Tip Top Guides.
The reason why he is a Recoil enthusiast stems from the fact that professional tournament anglers render a lot of stress and abuse on their rods' tip tops. Consequently, ceramic inserts are frequently displaced, plated guides are often nicked and scratched, and some guides are even bent and mashed.
Clasuen has had plenty of opportunities to abuse and destroy his rod's tip tops since he began his stellar professional tournament career on Jan. 9, 2003. During the past 10 years, he has won the Bassmaster Classic, Forrest Wood Cup and about $1,800,000. This year he enjoyed two top ten finishes, garnered $104,972 in prize money and finished in sixth place in the Walmart FLW Tour Angler of the Year competition.
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Since he began replacing the tip-top guides on all of his rod with REC Component's Recoil Tip Top Guides, he has not broken one or even put a minor blemish on one.
According to Clausen, they are made from a special nickel titanium alloy that possesses some unique physical properties. They do not require plating. They are astonishingly sturdy and extremely flexible. Even if they are stepped upon and momentarily misshaped, they return to their original configuration, which is why they were named Recoil Tip Top Guides. In addition, they will not corrode.
Clausen says the looks of the Recoil Tip Top Guide is extremely deceiving, and what he means by that is it tends to repel the eye of an angler rather than catch or attract it. Or in other words, it means that anglers and rod manufacturers are put off aesthetically by the looks of the Recoil Tip Top Guide, which consist of an aluminium tube that is connected to the nickle-titanium double-wire guide. In fact, he said that a number of anglers with whom he has crossed paths with across the years find it so unappealing to look at that they wouldn't even test it. Thus, from Clausen's perspective, it is beauty in the eye of the beholder syndrome. And over the course of time, he has discovered the beauty of its many attributes.
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Besides being virtually indestructible, Clausen sees it as being the most sensitive rod tip top that he has every employed. In fact, it can help an angler to detect a bass strike better and in more ways than any tip top guide in the market place.
While some anglers don't like the looks of the Recoil Tip Top Guide, Clausen has discovered that others don't like the sound that it renders as the line moves across the two segments of the nickle-titanium wire. But Clasuen has discovered that the noise possesses several benefits. For instance, it has allowed him to even hear the strike of a bass. What's more, he can hear imperfections, such as a nick, on his lines, which provokes him to immediately remove that flawed portion of his lines.
Not only does it facilitate strike detection, it weighs less than any of the guides made today, and Clausen has also found that it allows him to make longer casts.
In sum, Clausen thinks that ardent Midwest finesse anglers will find the Recoil Tip Top Guide to be as beneficial to their style of fishing as he has found it to be in all of his tournament endeavors.
They are expensive, however, costing from $8.99 to $9.49, but Clausen contends that anglers will reap significant dividends by wielding rods that are donned with Recoil Tip Top Guides. Moreover, frugal-minded anglers can use the same Recoil Tip Top Guides for several generations of rods by merely transferring them from their old rods to their new rods.
