Why you’ve been buying the wrong fly line your entire life

[resdog]

I would guess in the case of Sage they would design a rod around one of their own lines ? in the case of Scott , they do give line rec's for the rods but they cover quite a broad range of tapers and weights , not a surprise if they want to sell the rods. It would be nice to know who is consulting to the design of a given rod maybe ?

I don't know , just asking questions....on the 2 rods mentioned I cant really cant see any reason to not use a true weight ?

[Geenomad]

There are different views sometimes strongly held on rod and line weight designations so I'll make this my last plea for numeric liberation and sectarian freedom of choice. I see what Merlin has said and agree mostly but I don't think it's about scale so much as feel. Numbers don't make casts and scales can't measure the sensation of making one.

My position as stated is that the designated numbers don't tell me anything definitive and especially so if one day's casting/fishing is never longer than 45' and the next rarely shorter than 60'. For those days I change rods or change line weights, and mostly it will be the latter.

The numbers of course are the AFTMA standards, a copy of which I have just taken from elsewhere on SL and pasted into a spreadsheet. And just for the hell of it I took the standard weight in grams for each AFTMA number (ignoring the plus or minus ranges), divided it by 30 and then multiplied by 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 75 and 90.

Thirty feet of standard 5wt line should weigh about 9.07g. True. Also true is that the following are the same or near enough to be the same - 35' of a 4wt line, 26' of a 6wt line, 22' of a 7wt line.

Ok lets go to 45'of 5wt line. That's 13.61g or nearly the same as 40' of a 6wt, 33' of a 7wt and 30' of an 8 wt.

And so on it goes. We all reasonably expect 5wt rods to cast nicely at a wide range of distances including all of these and more so what are the numbers saying definitively about how all that will work out? Nothing or more precisely five eighths of three parts of fuck all. Referentially indicative yes but that's it.

Feel is much more definitive, albeit necessarily subjective. We all know what under lined and over lined rods feel like – vague and mushy, respectively. To standardise the descriptors another way lets adopt psych terms – dissociative and stress disorders have a nice ring to them.

So when an expert practitioner rates a rod as a 5wt what are they telling us? That to them the rod feels most content (not dissociated or stressed) with a 5wt line on it. Is their diagnosis definitive? No. Does mine have to match theirs? No. Will it often be the same? Yes. Will my rod and line weight combo change with contextual circumstances? Yes.

I know what people mean by a “true 6wt” rod or line and while I'm happy to accept the advice, that's as far as it goes. When I look on the side of the line box see the actual weight is actually several AFTMA numbers above the manufacturer's designation I know someone is trying to have a lend. Equally, the insistent purist stuff about true weights is either baffling or irritating depending on my mood.

Cheers
Mark

[Paul Arden]

Jerry designs around the GPX - he told me this a few years ago. Curiously I design around a TCR taper or similar spot on AFFTA line - MED or DT. I say curiously because ironically Jerry designed the TCR taper. If you're having to overline a rod then you are buying the wrong rod. If you want soft then buy a Winston. Beautifully designed for the slower actioned caster. A rod is designed for casting 1ft to max distance. I can't for the life of me think why you'd buy a rod that you think is too stiff for the suggested line, and then complain that it doesn't work. It seems to me that all you are really saying is you bought the wrong rod!

The problem of course, is that the only scale we have (AFFTA) is now being abused by some line manufacturers. This has been a problem for about 20 years actually. When I fish a 4-wt I want it to be a 4-wt. Because I've chosen fly first, then line, then rod. If the line is overweight then I cannot fish the way I want.

It's very easy to make a soft carbon rods and some companies specialise in it. T&T, Scott, Winston and even Hardy have all produced outstanding soft carbon rods. I think the main problem is people can't cast very well, and they're buying rods intended for people who can cast well. It takes some work to be a good caster but well worth it in the long run. If they don't have the stroke than enables them to generate high line speed then they should buy slow or learn. Up-lining makes no sense whatsoever. If I want the sensitivity of a given line weight, allowing me to fish flies of a given size and a leader that I can get away with, then why would I wish to compromise this with the rest of the tackle?

Crazy!

Incidentally, ResDog, this tells me that you are now an excellent caster. Well done mate

Cheers, Paul

[Morsie]

Experience tells me the problem is entirely to do with the caster's ability to adjust their casting stroke and haul to meet what ever match up they have at hand.

Morsie

[Paul Arden]

I think it has to do with casting the rod and not the line.

[petevicar]

I think that either I am missing something in the whole discussion about over lining rods or maybe I am just stupid.

The way I see it is that a line has a certain weight in the first 30ft and that makes the line a 5wt or 6 or what ever.

The ideal rod to cast this line is similarly a 5wt or 6 etc.

If the rod with a #5 labelled on it casts a 6wt line better doesn't that make it a #6 rod?

Please excuse my ignorance but these discussions seem to me to be a complete load of bollox.

Pete

[Lasse Karlsson]

Hi Pete

How do you define "casts better"?

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

Hi Pete,

no!

How far do you cast when fishing?

Cheer, Paul

[Viking Lars]

Who says which 5-wt is better with which 6-wt line :-)?

Lars

[Walter]

I used to own a Ford Pinto. I wrote Ferrari on the side and sold it for $150K. I used the profits to buy fly lines and tried them all on my 5 wt rod until I found the one that felt the best (at sea level, 25 degrees Celsius in a 5 mph wind with 50% humidity and a 30 foot carry I was able to make the tightest loops and throw it the farthest) . Turns out it was a 5wt line. I guess I sold my Ferrari for nothing.

Moral of the story - calling it a Ferrari didn't actually make it a Ferrari but if someone was willing to pay me the Ferrari price for it then who was I to argue?