distance phenomenon - when hauling for distance

[Paul Arden]

One of the ideas that Bernd put forward - and it sounded very convincing - was that the haul created a bend in the rod 90 degrees to the casting plane and that this created a wave through the rod which manifested itself as a tracking error. The problem is that the videos didn't show this occurring!!

Bernd also said suggested that the tick - and it appears all the very long carries had a small tick near the caster - somehow created the wave. Casting on top of the tractor trailer did remove the horizontal wave - however a slight breeze stirred things up at this point too and we couldn't replicate the error standing at ground level. So this didn't prove things either way.

What is interesting is that only a very small error in the tip path results in the problem. I had always considered it a tracking error - in positioning the backcast vs forward cast. And I'm sure that it can be created in this manner. However it also appears that the rod tip can create it near the beginning of the Casting Stroke as well as later in rotation. The fact that the tip only has to slightly veer away from the line direction is very interesting and I'm not sure that it can be totally eliminated without sacrificing maximum force. It's certainly something to try to eliminate completely. I don't think that it's a problem with shooting heads, nor indeed in stirred air.

Watching the line from the side or even from the front you wouldn't really be able to pick it, only that somehow the fly leg crossed over and that there was some slack in the layout, assuming windless conditions.

The loop shot from the front angle appears to stall, temporarily stop unrolling, the front of the loop is lifting, and this creates a tail. I've never seen a tail happen this way. The tail doesn't occur as a result of tip path, nor trajectory, but because of the climbing loop!

Hopefully I can get some more video from Spain this week. I'd like to try Alejandro's broomstick to see if the collision loops in the horizontal still occur.

Cheers, Paul

[gordonjudd]

It was only on hauled casts when the problem arose.

That qualifier argues against what i am seeing as rod twist would only depend on rod bend and spine alignment but I will make my case anyway.

If you can do this again, I hope you can take some shots without a haul to see if the twisting effects that impact the alignment of the reel as the rod is going from MRF to RSP1 and then to MCF and back to RPS2 also happens without a haul. I would expect it would, but some video would show if does or not.

Here are a couple of excised clips from Bernd's video that show the twisting I am talking about. From the front view you can see the reel turn to the right of the rod' bending plane as the rod is going from MRF to RSP1 and then goes left as the rod is going through counterflex. When shot from below those directions appear to be reversed.

That twisting effect happens so fast I think it is coming from the rod, and is not something that Paul might be doing with an out of plane wrist rotation.

Looking at the tip path (the red path is up to RSP and the green path is from RSP to MCF before the tip goes out of plane it appears the direction the tip is moving becomes slightly curved to the right near RSP as shown below.


Whether or not that slight tip path hump is enough to generate the large amplitude transverse wave you see at the end of cast that shows the line collision I do not know. We would need a shot taken from above that would show the line path from MCF to the end of the cast in order to determine when that troublesome horizontal transverse wave was generated.

If Sage has come up with a way to get rid of the spine in a rod so it does not twist out of plane with their "Konnetic Stability" concept I would be surprised, but their video would seem to say that the tip path tracking as the rod goes from MRF to MCF can produce a kick in the line that shows up as the loop starts to unroll.

However, to me some real video of the effect would have been more useful than the "artist's conception" they show in their video.

Paul, I hope Jerry Seim can shed some more light on that subject.

If the wave was coming from rod twist, then turning the rod half way around so the reel was pointed towards the forearm should reverse the direction of the horizontal wave. That would be something to try as well. You can never get enough data to shed light on a complicated problem.

Gordy

[John Waters]

Well, John, interesting video and it would be interesting to see if the ONE fixes it! I'll email Sage

Would be interested in his comments.

I would suggest 75% of the competitors in the 2011 Australian Fly Casting Championships in the single handed distance event displayed a similar loop profile (albeit to varying degrees) on their delivery cast. Unlike the relatively thicker running line of the 5 weight, these blokes were using 0.30 - 0.40 mm monofilament out of the rod tip for both the false casts and the delivery in reasonably calm conditions. The profile under discussion transcends gear so it must be technique and or conditions and as I have said, I suspect the former. I always get this profile at the start of each season and have to work on the tracking and timing of both my forward and back left hand haul as well as the tracking of my rod hand, particularly the relative positions of my wrist, elbow and shoulder. Given the much deeper bend that we get in our 5 weight rods, than we do in the stiffer SHD rods and therefore the propensity to be pulled off line, I believe the tracking of the haul hand assumes greater importance.

Look forward to comparing theories and impacts in NZ later this year.

John

[Lasse Karlsson]

I would suggest that the fault lies in technique. Played around with it in sweden on monday, and I could make it disappear even without standing on a tractor :p

Cheers
Lasse

[gordonjudd]

Played around with it in Sweden on Monday, and I could make it disappear even without standing on a tractor

Lasse,
What did you do to get rid of it and what did you do to make it reappear?

Did it only show up when you were hauling as well?

Gordy

[xyl]

Guys, this one is quite obvious really. Bernd simply put a spell on you and you're now all casting butt shaped loops for the rest of your lives.

Waiting for the video download to finish. The problem sounds familiar.

[xyl]

Having watched the video now, my thinking is that we're looking at a compound problem that consists of possibly multiple tracking errors from the caster plus a possible rod twisting action and the usual dolphin nose phenomenon. That compound complexity may be what makes it so difficult to actually pin down the precise cause for the line layout. That unhauled casting cures the problem is really confusing here. It fits with my own observation though.
As has been said, the tracking errors might be too small to effectively cure them consistently, especially since we don't exactly know what they are.
Gordy has done extensive work on the dolphin nose type loop shape, yet we still don't really know what causes them and if the caster has much control over them other than adjusting line speed. Personally i'm a little surprised to see those very pronounced dolphin noses at very high line speeds although it is in line with my thinking that a 100 percent dolphin nose free cast might not exist (99.999 yes but not 100).
Regarding the rod twisting i'm not so sure if it has enough impact to distort the loop. I have no data to back this up but i have a not so straight rod that i think i can feel twisting when casting it and that seems to have no effect on my loops or accuracy compared with other rods.

Again, this is probably a compound problem with a multitude of possible causes.

Can we be sure that it doesn't happen with unhauled casting? Because if it really doesn't, that would tie the cause to the haul in one or another way. Keep in mind that an unhauled cast is a shorter and slower cast too! Backing off 10' of my max distance with hauling looks as clean as my max distance without hauling most of the time (i think).

[Bernd]

Hi Svend,
I have compared my casts with and without hauling for about a thousand times now.
I don't have a single doubt left:
Casting without hauling (using my highest force) the line unrolls exactly like I want it to unroll = nice and straight.
Casting with hauling (and using almost my highest force, too) the phenomenon shows up consistantly as long as it is windless.

Yet I think wind helps to keep the fly-leg being faster than the rod-leg in the last part of unrolling. I think the answer to this question lies in the sudden slow down of the fly-leg speed.

Lots of good posts here!
Fredrik added some points which were exactly the same things that I tried and worked with for about 2 years now.
And I agree on his and Paul's conclusions as well ason Gordy's.

But I think there is just one main cause for this phenomenon and yet I don't think we have nailed and proved which it is. .

Paul,
did you cast with Alejandro's rigid rod and check what happens with the cast?

Lasse,
I can avoid my unrolling to totally fuck up. But this is not by eliminating the cause (I feel to be) behind this phenomenon but by compensating. It sounds like this is what Fredrik does (yet), too?

Greets
Bernd

p.s. Really feels good to me to know that we all have this problem and still cannot explain it!

[xyl]

Hi Bernd,

Could this phenomenon be the same thing we're seeing when casting shootingheads in windless conditions? In those conditions i seem to throw the same junk layout into the front of my heads consistently if i'm NOT slowing the shooting line down in some way. Not applying a haul cures it to a certain degree.
Also, i see less of the dolphin nose/crumple/hook thing with DT lines, more with the MED and even more with SH (all in no wind conditions).
What's confusing is that ticking (fly hitting the water on the BC) causes the same line layout, but it happens without ticking too.
Obviously some kind of "tension loss" is causing the line layout and the curve is a result of faulty tracking, pulling the rod out of line, or most likely canting the rod a little (line layout should not be the same for left and right handed casters). The loss of tension may be caused by a longer shoot for a hauled cast (shoot/loop-speed ratio), very little running line friction/weight, or ticking. I know that i often struggle turning the line over when going for max shoot from a long carry and i've shot the 5wt barrio gt140s way out of the rod tip on several occasions only to create a massive hook at the front end. The loop kind of just drops out of the sky, too much shoot for to little loop speed, probably caused by releasing too early?

Those are my thoughts right now, they may change tomorrow.
What do you think?

[Bernd]

Hi Svend,
I agree with your thoughts on the SH. Had that problem for years, too... .
I will try to find time to colour up some lines to make the speed of each leg more visuable and see if we can find more details here...
Thanks
Bernd

[Bernd]

Hi everyone,
I played around with the "phenomenon" today (again) .
Had another instructor friend passing by and training for his MCI exam.

I compared my casting when standing on grass and on a bank to avoid ticking.
On highest distance shoots the unrolling phenomenon showed up all the time in both cases.

The only way to get rid of it was to cast without using the haul or significally slowing down the hauling speed via line hand pull.
Everything else I tried (changing tracking, timing, rotation and so on) was only compensating.

It was interesting to see my friend did not have this issue that much like I had it on every distance shoot. The only difference I could find was his slower hauling speed available via line hand.

I am still wondering if maybe the line speed of the fly-leg gets too high and the air resistant (increasing in square) will slow down the fly-leg too much?

Could it be possible and if so how could we prove it to be the cause?

Greets
Bernd

[gordonjudd]

Could it be possible and if so how could we prove it to be the cause?

Bernd,
I do not see how in-line drag could provide a transverse force on the line to cause the line and leader to travel 90 degrees to the direction of the loop.

At least this set of tests took the "tractor" out of the picture, and you have eliminated ticking as being a cause of the problem.

I still think that it is a manifestation of a transverse wave, but aside from twisting of the blank I do not see what would produce it. If you have the chance to take some more video shot from a bird's eye view from above that might show when that wave was generated. That would be very useful in tracking this down.

You might need to see the back cast as well so it may take multiple views looking at the back cast and then the forward cast regions to get enough resolution to pick up when the initial sideways dip in the line is being produced.

Hauling would increase the force on the line and thus might cause more twist in the blank. That is just a bit of hand waving until you can get some video taken with and without a haul, but it is a possibility.

Do you rotate your wrist on the forward cast so that the rod butt rotates 90 degrees and ends up with the axis of the reel being horizontal at the the end of the forward cast? You can see your reel axis is vertical at the end of the back cast, so if it is horizontal at the end of the forward cast then you have twisted the butt of the rod 90 degrees during the cast. Does that happen early on, or is going on while the rod has quite a bit of bend? That could cause some "twisting kick" on the rod tip as well.

So much for hand waving, we need some more video to come up with some reasonable answers to a question that has bugged me for years on my own casting.

Gordy

[Bernd]

Hi Gordy,
many thanks for your thoughts/help!
I have tried to twist the reel in all ways inwards and outwards that I could think of earlier this year. I could not find any influence to the problem.
Am pretty sure this is not the cause.

I will see if I can get a video from the bird's view following the fly-leg all the way from behind to the front... One from the horizontal, too...
May take some time. I will come back when having it done!
Greets
Bernd
p.s. Off to Steelheading for about 3 weeks now :kungfo: .

[crunch]

Hauling produces line stretch. What does it do?

When line is released stretch recovery starts immediately and much faster than rod straightening without haul does. Line stretch release might result sideways "kick" to a rod?

[Eugene Moore]

Bernd,
I believe your haul is non-planar with the rod causing rod deflection at the stripper guide. This deflection is magnified at the rod tip by the length of the beam. As soon as the haul is completed the rod goes back to it's original plane with the line. The deflection has however created an horizontal wave traveling down the line.