Fly Rods - slow or fast action

[Paul Arden]

Some art..

IMG_6890.jpeg (38.68 KiB) Viewed 404 times

Start adding line 1’ at a time and the loops each progressively become similarly unstable.

Of course particularly soft rods might throw a spanner in this.

Now I’m going fishing. Board fully upgraded now both with latest MySQL and PHP versions.

Cheers, Paul

[John Waters]

Hi Lasse,

I am the opposite to you with an MED vs a shooting head. Because I cast heads of the same length, mass is not a variable when I experiment with different rod actions. When I was experimenting with rods for the MED Trout Distance event, I used a head that was the same mass as the MED carry length I targeted as my carry length in a competition. I agree with you about casting technique flaws.

John

[Lasse Karlsson]

Hi John

I think you misunderstand me.
MED fixed mass, phat shootingline
Shootinghead fixed mass, skinny shootingline
The ratio between the head mass and the shootingline is larger with the heads, offering greater variable in distances. I use shootingheads 99% of the time.

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

I can’t believe I agree with Lasse, but I do. Casting the Med is similar to casting a shooting head because we are playing with overhang. I aim to put the head at the top of the loop and increase from there depending on conditions. Tail wind = increase overhang /running line at the very top of the loop at MCF (or release point, depending on your technique).

That’s what my art cleverly reveals and why the carry needs to be longer with a softer rod for the same head positioning.

Cheers,
Paul Da Belum

[John Waters]

Hi John

I think you misunderstand me.
MED fixed mass, phat shootingline
Shootinghead fixed mass, skinny shootingline
The ratio between the head mass and the shootingline is larger with the heads, offering greater variable in distances. I use shootingheads 99% of the time.

Cheers
Lasse

Hi Lasse,

Thanks for that explanation. I understand and agree about the ratio between head and running line. I thought it was about choosing a rod that performed better than others for an individual caster. If I want to decide which rod of say 3, delivers the longest casts, I would use the same head length, mass and density as well as the same backing diameter in the trial.

My propensity for confusion knows no bounds,

John

[Paul Arden]

Basically the way I see it, is that if we stick the MED head in all cases at the very top of the loop, carry will by necessity be slightly longer to account for increased CF resulting from the softer rod. The greater CF in turn means an initially more open loop. Thats why I think stiffer rods cast a little bit further than softer rods. And also why it’s only a little bit further, and not really something of significance when fishing, only in competition.

I’ll go out on a limb here. If the rod is very stiff and we have a strong tail wind, then it’s more difficult to fully straighten a ~90’ carry, than it is with say a moderately stiff rod. It would be interesting to speculate why this is so. Certainly this is my experience when casting the HT12/5MED in the wind.

Cheers, Paul

[RSalar]

Being a card carrying member of the bend matters school I'm obviously prejudice, but I can see that the way we cast matters as well. How much wrist do we employ vs elbow and shoulder. How do we accelerate and stop -- translation vs rotation, the way we haul, etc. It all effects the way the rod flexes and which rod we can personally cast farther. All I know is that bend matters and if it didn't we would all be using 2x4s instead of finely crafted fly rods.

Cheers from snowy new england,

Ron

[Paul Arden]

Hi Ron,

The original question suggested that more bend was better because it meant more stored spring energy. However if we have two rods; Wilson Super Soft and Sega Super Stiff – and put the same amount of force into each then Super Soft will bend very much more but the Elastic Potential Energy stored in each will be the same.

I think it’s a bit of a Red Herring however because I’m a “the main purpose of rod bend is to turn rotation at the rod butt into a straightish tip path” kind of guy. A bendy rod certainly allows us to put more force into a given arc as well. But if we look into measured casting results of distance casters using stiff vs soft rods we can see that stiff rods have been getting longer casts. And then the next question is why?

Cheers, Paul

[James9118]

Lou,

These are the results of a test I did a while back - Sage TCX #5, #7 & #10 all cast on the same day with a MED #5 line. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

[Lasse Karlsson]

Conclusion, James uses the TCX1090 for his MED casting...

There, fixed the bias