Al....
One of our friends is an inveterate practical joker. He played this nasty trick of cutting the fly line, one day. After observing what happened, I decided to take a closer look at this, and went out with a couple of old discarded lines which I cut and put this to the test.
Within practical physical limits the loop, once formed, will continue to travel in the direction of the cast only as long as it is unrolling. It unrolls in part due to it's forward motion against resistance most of which is at the rod tip when the line is not shot, and against the rod tip, the guides, and the inertia of remainder of the line behind the loop, itself when shooting line.
With a cut line, you don't have resistance of the rod tip or the guides.....only that of the line behind the loop, so the loop takes a long time to unroll.....in most instances never unrolling fullty or much at all.
Now, the longer it takes for that loop to unroll, the longer the cast. The limiting factors which keep it from going forward forever, are gravity (which DOES work even on an unrolling loop to some extent ) and atmospheric resistance.
Al..... DO take a line ready for discard and try this. It's an eye opener.
Gordy
From: "Allen Crise" <flysoup@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Gordon Hill" <hillshead@xxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: More than you may want to know.
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:59:48 -0600
Howdy GordyI am not about to cut my flyline....If you give the rod leg of the line too much slack the loop will fail and fall.So if you cut the line you could reduce the rod leg drag like breaking the kite string the kite falls.ol Al