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Walter & Group....
Lefty Kreh weighs in on the question of rod designations. He makes his point by using a real life teaching situation :-
Gordy,
To answer Lewis Hinks' question about why a rod might be marked with two line size designation:
In the past five years of casting a huge number of fly rods I have only found two that I thought were "bad:" casting rods. You and I know that years ago it was just the opposite. I believe there are are virtually no bad casting rods on the market today. Having said that, almost any rod manufactured in the past ten years will EASILY cast three weights of line from the same manufacturer.
For example, at Seattle a few years ago a young man came up to me at the show and said, "I bought this 6-weight rod, and it doesn't cast a 6 line." Gathering up 4-5-6-7- and 8 weight lines we went to the pool and I cast all of them from about 10 feet to the length of each line. All it required was a little altering of the casting stroke.
I then asked the young man what he thought was wrong and I had to laugh at his answer. He said, "I guess I can't cast." We spent 20 minutes casting and at the end he was delighted with his rod.
I mention this only to show rods will cast a huge number of lines. Admittedly, you may have to adjust the casting stroke but rods are CAPABLE of handling various line sizes.
Just because a rod says it is made for a 6-weight line doesn't mean that you must cast a 6 weight line. For more than five decades I have suggested in clinics and in print that when you are trout fishing open, calm pools with dry flies---use one size LIGHTER line than the rod calls of. It is the line's impact on the surface that frightens most trout not the fluffy dry fly. By reducing the impact with a lighter line that easily cast a weightless dry fly you enhance your chances of catching more trout. Just the opposite occurs when an angler is fishing a small stream where long casts are impossible and he is throwing weighted streamers or nymphs. Because so little of the fly line is outside the tip it's difficult to load the rod to turn over the weighted flies. What does a good angler do? He uses a line one size heavier than the rod calls for. Consider a TEENY 300 grain line cast well on an 8 weight rod--but that rod calls for a 210 grain line.
The function of the fly line is to deliver the fly to the target and experienced fly fisherman will utilize the line size that best does the job.
Lefty
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[GH] Lefty,
I love your example ! Says a lot.
As Dennis Grant is fond of saying, "it depends.......".
Depends on the caster, the fishing situation, the size and weight of the fly and what he is trying to accomplish.
These number systems make it seem as though it is some kind of exact science all calculated by computers and formulas.
>From what I have seen, the rod maker whether a custom bamboo rod craftsman or a big corporation making modern graphite rods, uses a very subjective method to rate any given rod. Subjective, because it is based on the "feel" of the rod when cast with various lines and the casting accomplishment.
Several years ago, Steve Rajeff brought a bunch of new prototype G.Loomis rod sections for us to try out. No rod-section arrangement had a designation. Each section had an identification number.
The idea was to take these various sections and mount them together in various combinations to see which combos would make good rods for their salt water series about to come out.
We spent hours casting these various combos with different line weights then compiling the numbers to see which section combo (rod) functioned best with which weight line.
In the end it became obvious that for the most part it came down to a few combinations of rod sections and lines which best accomplished the varied tasks which we set up.
Even that yielded different results when we compared the opinions of our other casters who were given the same tasks !
Gordy
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Scott Swartz comes in with his "long answer", then seals it with his "short answer" :
Gordy,
Line ratings are over rated…Dual rated rods handle more than one line weight (as all rods can). Here is some interesting math I use in our fly casting schools. The credit for this lesson goes to the Temple Forks web site some years ago.
All rods must be able to handle a wide variety of line weights while casting. Let's take a 6 wt. fly rod as an example. Per AFFTA, the first 30' of a 6 weight fly line is 160 grains. If you are casting with half that much or only 15' of fly line it would weight only 80 grains which is equal to only a two weight line. What happens when you make a distance cast to 70 feet? We know that the first 30' of our 6 weight line weighs 160 grains, but carrying another 40 feet of running line in the air (at approximately 3 grains per foot x 40 feet = another 120 grains) for a total weight of 280 grains of fly line. That is equal to casting a 10 weight line.
Short Answer: With dual rated rods use the lighter designation for fishing beyond 30 feet and the heavier for less than 30 feet.
Best,
Capt. Scott Swartz
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