“Personal Perfect Rod” Recipe - Taylor make your rods

[Paul Arden]

Rods and blank don’t normally come with instructions.

They usually come with a suggested AFTMA line number.

[Bill Hanneman]

Rods and blank don’t normally come with instructions.

They usually come with a suggested AFTMA line number.

And, what pray tell good is that? Any rod will cast any line some distance. Where is the missing distance number to be found?

[Paul Arden]

What you mean like 73ft? I think this is the core of the misunderstanding between us. Rods cast from the rod tip to whatever your maximum distance, they bend progressively depending on the force applied and the amount of line carried, and to do this we modify our stroke to suit the bend in the rod. It appears that you wish to modify the rod to create a given preferred bend, which is very odd because the only way this would make sense is if you fish by constantly picking up and laying down a fixed length of line?

Cheers, Paul

[gordonjudd]

It appears that you wish to modify the rod to create a given preferred bend, which is very odd because the only way this would make sense is if you fish by constantly picking up and laying down a fixed length of line?

Paul,

I doubt that the fish would co-operate to make that a very productive endeavor so Bill's method would require a more effective approach to comply with his PPF constraint.

All it requires is to have a trusted ghilliey at your side to hand you a new rod when you want to cast to a different distance. It works for golf, so why not fly fishing?

On the plus side it could open up a whole new job description and get more people employed in this economy.

Gordy


http://www.sexyloops.co.uk/cgi-bin....y248830

[Paul Arden]

Yes I read that at the time!!

It seems to me that there is a weird idea out there - and I've heard it before - that to make short casts you need to overline the rod by an AFTMA or two. The idea being, one supposes, that the shorter the cast the higher the line number in order to load the rod!!

There are a number of misunderstandings here, not least that somehow in order to cast you need to load the rod which we know is a fallacy since rod loading only accounts for 15-20 percent of line acceleration (on a non-hauled cast), the rest being leverage (and it's even less on a hauled cast!).

And the other, even more significant, misunderstood concept is the idea that a rod somehow becomes loaded at a certain bend. The truth is that a rod is "loaded" with any bend, whether that be the top 1% or down through to the butt, and the primary purpose of rod "loading" is to turn rotation at the rod butt into near translation (or desired tip path) at the tip.

I certainly don't pick a flyline-to-rod combination over how it feels for bending the rod 1/3 its length, nor how it feels for 10 yard PUALDs. A rod has to be comfortable for me, for casting from the rod tip to maximum carry for a given application, and apart from, in a few unusual circumstances, it has to feel comfortable for dynamic and static roll casts too. For me the compromise comes between long carries and static roll casts. For stillwater and saltwater I would err towards the longer carry. For small streams towards the roll cast.

I actually met someone who would take a delicate stream rod designed for short casts using light lines, who would overline the rod so that it would bent to the butt for his short casts. Talk about killing a rod! When all he had to do was adjust his casting arc. It seems like a great deal of effort to go though to avoid the pleasure of learning to cast. But everyone is different!

The irony is when someone who doesn't want to learn to cast - and may even have an ego about not learning - then has the audacity to put down those who have!

Amazing.

Cheers, Paul

[Bobinmich]

Paul,

Nice post. It is definitely true that an experienced caster can cast nearly anything. But overlining (or under rodding) may, in fact, be a preference thing as well as a skill thing. A good caster can shorten his stroke or reduce his hand loading and use a rather stiff graphite rod on small stream casts. But those who prefer to over line, or use a light rod with the line required for the fly being used, could be because they like the feel of it. It is possible that they can cast just fine with a stiff and fast (high ERN and low MOI if you prefer) rod but actually like the longer rod path and more relaxed feel of a slower rod. Otherwise, why glass or bamboo?

There are many roads to Rome. Some may choose a different road because they like the scenery, not because they are lousy drivers.

Bob

[gordonjudd]

Merlin,
I think his curve is non-linear because the AFFTA line weight vs mass curve is non-linear as you go to higher line weight values.

Merlin,
As you know if you plot the Hoffman/Kyte spring constant values vs the line mass you get a very linear curve as shown below.


Looking at this curve your use of a constant slope parameter to match the spring constant measured at the 25% relative deflection point to the line mass is more than justified at least if Al Kyte is the one who is experienced enough to determine how different rods are matched to different lines.

This curve makes me realize that simply marking the mass of the first 10 meters of line as (Rasmus Hansen does with his lines) makes much more sense than the non-linear curve that the line manufacturers derived for the current AFFTA system.

Gordy

[rodfreak]

Hi Gordy,

Shouldn't the y-axis be gm not gr?

John

[gordonjudd]

Shouldn't the y-axis be gm not gr?

John,
I see from Wikipedia that:

The International System of Units symbol for the gram is g followed the numeric value with a space, as in "640 g". (symbols are language-neutral, abbreviations are not)

but I also see that gr is the accepted symbol for grains (I thought it was gn). That is a major confusion factor, so I just spelled it out.

Thank you for your correction.

Gordy