Bruce Richards video

[tigfly]

Really enjoyed the interview with Bruce Richards.
His comments about textured lines explains my experience with them. Great for shooting line into short to medium range casts but little advantage over smooth lines for distance when the head itself is carried outside the tiptop.

[Paul Arden]

It was a very enlightening conversation for me because I realised why there are so few long belly lines and why what I would consider to be niche line is actually mainstream. I had always thought that being a novice fly fisherman was the first stage in a long path of continual learning, and hadn’t considered fly fishing to be anything other than an obsession before! The world just gets stranger

Great to catch up with Bruce!

Cheers, Paul

[Rickard]

At around 20 minutes where you talk about DT and sinking lines I have noticed what Bruce says that the head is not noticeable on light lines. I have a Rio Mainstream 4wt sink 6. The head is not noticeable and you can carry the full line.

[Paul Arden]

Yep I found this interesting and maybe explains why I thought they were DTs for all these years. I still seem to recall buying both however! Seems like I just can’t trust my memory

I know Cortland has some long belly Rocket taper sinking lines because I bought those in the mid 90s. At least I think so

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

SA has a saltwater line on a 100 pound core, you can't tell the head on a 12 weight on that either

[FishNoGeek]

I really enjoyed it, too. Highlights for me were his insights into textured lines, the coated-vs-extruded stuff, and that analogy with throwing a ball where he talked about how there are lots of ways to throw 20ft, but if you're trying to go farther the range of techniques that will get the job done narrows dramatically. Not sure why I hadn't made (or heard) that observation before, but it makes perfect sense in my head and will be useful conversationally going forward.

If ever you did another call with him, I'd love to hear his thoughts about the trade-offs around temperature. It's been over 40C every day here for a month with the heat index well over 50C most afternoons, and it's cutting into my casting practice. Even some of my tropical lines get sorta squishy. I feel like the taper angle has been pretty thoroughly explored, maybe even a little too much - it's a nightmare trying to help newbies navigate that labyrinth - and I'm not sure how many performance improvements can still be squeezed out of tweaking weights and head lengths - especially not for casual casters.

I do think there's room for improvement with regard to making lines work well in a broader variety of temperatures. Thoughts on that, anybody?

[VGB]

that analogy with throwing a ball where he talked about how there are lots of ways to throw 20ft, but if you're trying to go farther the range of techniques that will get the job done narrows dramatically. Not sure why I hadn't made (or heard) that observation before, but it makes perfect sense in my head and will be useful conversationally going forward.

That was interesting for me as well because if you look at javelin throwing as a competitive throwing sport that has been going on for thousands of years that solution convergence doesn’t exist. There’s a baseball throwing study that looked at high standard players that found that solutions converged to about 80% of total throwing speed but then diverged.

I found the following debate interesting about line designs but think that it boiled down to perspective. Bruce is selling to the public that aspires to the 80% level, whereas Paul is paddling in the 80-100% performers. I think it changes the emphasis.

As far as temperature range goes, mid summer here, 23 degrees C and raining

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

Hi Brian,

Reply here from Bruce:

Lines and temperature.... It would be nice if there was one combination of fly line coating and core that would work well in all temperatures, but it doesn't exist, yet. Each line has a range of temperatures where they work best. If a line is made to be ideal at 40C it's going to be a bit hard/stiff at 30C. So line makers shoot for making lines that are best at the average temp. for each fishing application/geographic location. A casters willingness to prepare a line for use is a factor too. Some won't stretch stiff/hard lines before use and complain of memory coils, that must be considered too.
Lines can be made that would be ideal at 40-45C but they would require a lot of stretching to work well at 30C. But, with a little care any line can be made to work better in hot weather. Lines must be clean and dressed with a good silicone line dressing for best performance in the heat. Lines that are very slick in the guides tangle much less, shoot/haul much better, even when the coatings get softer from the heat. Laying a line on a dark colored boat deck is asking for trouble. I knew a couple permit anglers years ago that used a plastic dish tub with ice in it to strip their line into. Permit fishing is typically a lot of standing around with the occasional panicky quick shot at a speeding fish. You can't afford to have tangles when you don't get many shots. If the water you're fishing is cooler than the air, keep the line in the water as much as you can. And of course, texturing reduces friction significantly too, even better if also dressed. Reducing friction is great for shooting, hauling AND reducing tangling.
Fishnogeeks comments about line improvements not coming from further tweaks in line tapers and weight are right on. Further significant improvements will almost certainly come from new materials, and maybe the all-weather fly line will be the result!
Bruce

[Paul Arden]

I agree with both those comments Vince. I think the distance convergence is quite generalised. There are some exceptions but most of the really competitive 5WT casters are 170. Or at least I would consider under that umbrella. It then becomes interesting to see how they diverge.

It reminds me of when I first met Steve Parton and, on a totally different topic, he talked about a large pyramid with a smaller inverted pyramid on top. The bottom one was to explain that you couldn’t be too cheap in the rod market. And the top one, to a point, that you couldn’t be too expensive but that the middle market, back then, had virtually zero sales. I think that probably changed, but certainly in economic challenging times we see it re-form. Anyway…

Taking that same pyramids example, distance casters seem to have converged around the 170 and then tweaked or explored things from there. At least that’s how I imagine it

Cheers, Paul

[FishNoGeek]

Reply here from Bruce:

Awesome, thanks for following up with him! More or less as expected - my sense is that if anybody's created some new material that revolutionizes casting, this crew is likely to know about it first. Still, it's nice to have confirmation that we're all struggling with the same challenges, and the tips for improving performance are good to have validated as well. My little green can of silicon spray never leaves my casting kit now, and I've got one for the rigging desk as well - works wonders on my squeaky office chair, too!

That was interesting for me as well because if you look at javelin throwing as a competitive throwing sport that has been going on for thousands of years that solution convergence doesn’t exist.

I've unexpectedly and quite suddenly become a fan of javelin throwing! Check out this clip:

That particular camera angle on that throw (from 1:37 to 1:55 or so) has me thinking very hard about Bernt's shuffle, and his arm / elbow position with respect to both the linear thrust and rotational energy....man, it's almost got me wishing I were better at numbers than words. There's gotta be some good stuff for us in there.

That said, I'm not sure I follow Vince's observation that there isn't much "solution convergence" in the javelin. I've only started working through videos and sites today, but so far it seems like the elite throwers are down to just a few grips (three, I think?) and two styles ("wrap" as epitomized by Jan Železný, world record holder since 1993 and pretty much the sport's GOAT, which seems to rely more on rotation; and the "linear" version that seems to be favored by the Germans). To my untrained eye, some of the throwers (or maybe just some of their throws) seem to blur those lines, so I'm not sure how distinct the styles really are. I'm not seeing radically different approaches at those world-class levels. Is there more that I've missed in my short ramp-up?

At the moment, to me all of that sounds very much like elite distance fly casting: just a few grips and two-ish styles at the top levels, and a fair bit of blurring between. In fact, this javelin stuff seems much more analogous to extreme distance casting than several other throwing or hitting sports - if nothing else, tracking for a javelin throw is much more like fly casting than, say, for golf or tennis or badminton or even volleyball. Also, flight trajectory is more of thing for both casting and javelin than it would be for a baseball pitcher.

Hmmm. Lots to unpack here. Tomorrow maybe I'll dig into the atl-atl....

As far as temperature range goes, mid summer here, 23 degrees C and raining

Ouch. Better stretch your lines to avoid coils in those frigid temperatures....

It reminds me of when I first met Steve Parton and, on a totally different topic, he talked about a large pyramid with a smaller inverted pyramid on top. The bottom one was to explain that you couldn’t be too cheap in the rod market. And the top one, to a point, that you couldn’t be too expensive but that the middle market, back then, had virtually zero sales. I think that probably changed, but certainly in economic challenging times we see it re-form. Anyway…

Taking that same pyramids example, distance casters seem to have converged around the 170 and then tweaked or explored things from there. At least that’s how I imagine it

I'm nerdy enough that I tried to make an infographic of this, and to plot some relative values on an X-Y graph, like maybe "Skill" or "Utility" increasing as it goes up, or trying to build some relationship with "Price". I couldn't make it work for those things. I do think it worked well as an analogy for the relationship between price and rod sales up to around the 2005-2010 era, but I couldn't come up with useful ways to apply it to casting or fishing skills or catch rates.

But maybe it does also work to describe the market for fly patterns? Thinking just about trout patterns: lots of cheap, basic patterns get sold and fished, and they work fine for the majority of fishermen and fishing applications - that's the wide base of the bottom pyramid. The more realistic the patterns get, the more expensive they become; demand tapers off, and they really don't catch all that many more fish than the trusty general stand-by patterns - that's the narrow top of the bottom pyramid. But above that is where you get into the smaller inverted pyramid at the top: ever more realistic and elaborate or specialized patterns designed mostly to catch fisherman rather than fish, and the price ceiling just keeps rising.

That sorta works for me. I can't be bothered to tie or buy or fish that fancy stuff, but I'm glad there are people out there designing and tying those awesome patterns and getting paid big money by people who aren't likely to throw them very far....