The Uribe Riverside rods make use of a blended carbon blank design featuring a combination of Toray carbon and boron fibers all with a nano resin pre-preg

Impressions: Anglers can argue the spiral wrapped pros and cons at length but what it ultimately boils down to is priorities and preferences. So let’s start with why they even exist to begin with.

The goal of a spiral wrap is to achieve some of the benefits of a spinning rod configuration with a casting rod setup, including optimal guide spacing, guide reduction (and thus weight reduction), improved sensitivity, and better power and fish fighting characteristics.

One of the biggest features of the rod is the spiral wrap that is designed to remove stress out of the rod while reducing friction

When spiral wraps first came out there was a lot experimentation, not only on the guide spacing but also the degree of rotation of the guides to maximize line handling without adverse effects to line lay on reels. This was far from an exact science and early freshwater and saltwater rods were met with much skepticism and criticism of not only the performance benefits but how odd they looked in comparison to traditional casting rods.

The M2 rod is one of three rods in the series and is designed to be an all purpose rod

Over time optimal spacing and new guides allowed for more efficient designs, helping rod makers build new configurations that more seamlessly managed line and torque, effectively reducing blank twisting and friction with less guides for the line to have to go through while both casting baits or loading up when fighting fish.

Today spiral wrapped rods have refined to the point where most anglers agree that the design does offer performance benefits, but adoption is still surprisingly slow as the biggest barrier continues to be anglers having trouble wrapping their heads around the non-symmetrical guide placement, some downright rejecting them based on styling alone.

I paired the rod with a Shimano Bantam throughout the tests

I know I personally have in years past while Cal fell on the other side of the spectrum and actively pursued these rods or had custom ones built for his own collection. Uribe Fishing Products is a rod manufacturer that not only employs the spiral wrapped design but fully embraces it with their “Twisted Wrapped Guide System,” which is the company’s take on the spiral guide configuration, and intended to create an overall more sensitive and durable rod.

Real World Tests: Uribe currently offers two rod lines, the mainstream oriented Riverside Series and higher-end Scuderia Series. The rods that we were most interested in taking a look at first were the more aggressively priced Riverside rods which are named after the location in California where the company is based. The company keeps things simple with this series, offering only three Riverside rod options, the M1 (8-15lb), M2 (10-20lb), and M3 (12-25lb) configurations.

Time to see how this rod performs

Next Section: Experiencing the M2 Twisted Wrapped Guides