Snake Brand has brought to the industry numerous innovations throughout the last decade - i.e. Graduated wire diameters for each guide size, radiuses guide feet for ease of wrapping and the Universal Guide with its concave radius that allows the guide to be self-homing and self-aligning to the rod blank. All of us have at one time or another have tried to attach a flat stamped foreign guide to a round blank only to discover that the guide will rotate with thread pressure and the point of contact is just a few thousands.

Snake Brand's customers for some years now have encouraged us to develop a high tech coating that would be an alternative to chrome, as they have expressed concerns about the disposal of problematic chemicals used in the chrome process. Who knows what may happen in countries that have little or no concerns about the disposition of these chemicals.

When Mike McCoy of Snake Brand Guides designed the Universal Guide he wanted to create a user friendly guide that would be easy to wrap and to provide a labor savings for the rod builder or for any OEM company keen on saving the man-hours used in aligning guides on their rods. Mike understood the importance of weight and how it affects the performance of even the finest designed rods, and with this in mind he created the Universal Guide.

About 19 years ago I was introduced to rod building by Daryll Whitehead and he encouraged me to develop a series of fly rod guides. As the result of this encouragement I left a well paying engineering job and started Snake Brand Guides.

I recognized that the reduction of weight affected even the best designed fly rods and that is why I designed guides each having its own wire diameter to complement the guides location on the fly rod which was an industry first. Our original design utilized high carbon steel but after having numerous conversations with respected rod builders and companies we recognized that off-shore suppliers of components were experiencing rust issues even on guides that had a coating of chrome plating. This prompted me to explore using a superior grade of stainless steel that had terrific rust resistivity properties. Even though we incurred more expense with this alloy Snake Brand Guides has always been committed to Quality, Uniformity and Consistency.

It has always been my belief that custom built fly rods whether of bamboo, graphite or glass are works of art. The custom builder has the opportunity to create something of beauty and elegance. The custom builder takes a great deal of care and pays attention to every detail that goes into the rods construction.

It is our desire to offer to the rod building community reel seat designs that are lighter in weight and elegant in design. We offer a traditional series of nickel silver reel seats in three configurations, a down lock slide band, an up lock threaded barrel and a down lock threaded barrel and a selection of woods that complement these designs. In the last year we have had the pleasure of collaborating on a new design that incorporates elegance of design and lines that flow with the subtle yet elegant rope knurling. We are also featuring a new alloy that is lighter than nickel silver and its beautiful gold tone is a compliment to any rod. It can also be done in a black nickel which is another feature that we are excited about.

Some months ago I had Salt Fog Tests conducted by Durkee Testing Laboratories, Inc.  The duration of the testing was for 1200 hours as we wanted to know how our stainless steel alloy would hold up under these conditions. We were very pleased with the results for both our Chrome Plated and Black Nickel Plated Guides. I was also delighted to see that our non-plated guides performed extremely well and to quote the examiner, that "the non-plated guides exhibited no change".