I guess that there are a lot of variables. Line taper, slickness, running line diameter, head length etc.
One big difference however that will have a profound impact on shoot vs carry is how is carry measured? I think that you are measuring flyline outside the tip, James? I measure carry to the line hand.
Certainly at short lengths it would seem strange to be measuring the line in the rod rings and the length of the haul. At long lengths when approaching holding the full line it makes more sense IMO (otherwise when do you measure? Beginning or end of the haul?). Many years ago this was argued for yonks. But irrespective of that the difference is obviously quite important.
With a full line and not a shooting head 50% is conservative when measured to the rod tip. Measured to the hauling hand 50% is optimistic I believe.
For example with the MED I typically carry 90’. Flyline to hauling hand excluding leader. 50% would be a 45’ shoot putting the end (backing knot) of the 120’ line 6’ outside the rod tip. Now I can do that and that’s a good cast, but with zero wind this is a truly superb cast atypical. More typically I would expect about 10’ less shot.In fact in some dead air conditions (eg Norway first year) just putting the line out to the butt ring is about all that can be hoped for... 90’ carry, 30’ shot, 120’ flyline, ~10’ leader (don’t use Lasse’s because it will really be 10’ and not 3m
) for about a 115’ cast. No doubt making conditions even more critical than how carry is measured!It’s interesting because if by measuring carry outside tip vs to line hand makes the 50% value either conservative or optimistic, I actually think it’s a quite good rule of thumb! I was interested to see if the progression was linear or curved and suspected it to be curved with at some point little line being shot. Certainly your graphs appear to clearly show this.
Cheers, Paul
