Walter & Group........
From Michael Jones:
Assignment: Design a distance casting line.
Assumption: not a shooting head. Must be a full-floating line. This
line could be made with varying manufacturing techniques incorporated
into one line.
A line designed for distance casting should address several important
variables that improve efficiency for a long controlled cast: the
mass of the line must be distributed over a longer distance to improve
loading, keep the belly narrower in diameter (low resistence to drag
from air/wind), and maintain good loop shape i.e. the distance cast
will require efficient carrying of longer lengths of line than average
WF lines are designed to carry.
To represent this in a profile:
My fantasy distance line would be a Frankenstein Line with components
of the line making process integrated to improve distance efficiency.
In terms of taper, it should have a convex-compound front taper: where
there is a steep taper, followed by a shallow taper leading to a
long-thin belly, then a longish back taper leading into the running
line.
Long-thin belly? Yes, make the lines weight designation derived from
50' instead of 30' length.
Tip: 3-5' level.
Front taper: Convex-compound taper: would increase in diameter in
10' by a factor of 3, then increase in daimeter from 10'-25' by a
factor of 1,
Belly: for 35', thinner and longer than standard WF.
Back taper: 20' down to running line diameter (see running line diameter).
Running line: level, thin.
For a coating, I do like the stiffness to slickness ratio achieved in
the Airflo PVC coatings, and PVC can be made either stiffer/softer
very easily...and in that vein, I would like to see a stiff "tip" with
a graduated density (becoming softer) as the line went through the
compound taper and through the belly. This would make the
acceleration at the fly very quick, and gentle. Past the belly, the
coating should become stiff again through the back taper and into the
running line.
The core: Simple- braided multifilament nylon, welded into a single
strand monofilament core meeting at the union of the belly and the
begining of the back taper.By putting this union in the belly/back
taper transition, the change in core material would be disguised.
This would achieve the suptle transition requirements of achieving
tight loops for the casting part of the line, while allowing the
running line to have very little 'stretch' and no memory: Think of
Mel Kreigers "MEL-O" practice rod: Braided polyproylene line with a
yarn tip...baby don't she cast nice!!!
Texture: I am going to go big and say that with my limited experience
with textured surface lines (like SHARKSKIN or Airflo Ridge) it is
strongly 'possible' that texture reduces coefficiency of drag, and is
a perceived benefit in distance casting technology.
Considerations: It would be difficult to alter the density of the
coating through the head of the line, but if it could be done, I think
it would help to maintain almost perfect efficiency of loop size
during taper diminish, while line transfers from dynamic to static
state in loop unravelling.
My qualm about most BIG casting lines (distance) is that they are too
heavy to the front, and very often too stiff (maybe that has to do
with where they are most often used). I would prefer to carry much
more line, get to the running line, and shoot a smoother transition
taper (accomplished both in taper design and core/coating
variation)out with great speed and low coefficient of friction from
wind. The difficulty is in getting all the properties to do this into
one package!
Michael Jones
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COMMENT: Wow ! That gets us into the idea of customizing a distance fly line for an individual caster. One could customize the line for a particular rod or rod action, as well. (Bob Shigley mentioned the designing of a line for a particular rod.)
Frankly, that might yield the best of both worlds. In the real world, however, the manufacturer of a fly line likely considers a design which will work best for most distance casters and for the rods customarily used for distance events.
Certainly, we customize our shooting heads and running lines, sometimes clipping the forward taper back, etc, etc. to gain distance on the river.
Al Buhr has become the Guru of splicing sections of fly lines together to get the desired castability.
The intent of my question, however, was to come up with a good generic formula for a distance fly line for most casters using the fast action fly rods customarily employed for that kind of casting.
Gordy
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Bruce Richards' reply :-
Gordy, what a great idea! Although I've certainly made a few "cheater"
lines over the years, with distance being the only design criteria, most of
the time when designing a line for distance it also has to fish reasonably
well, even the Expert Distance, so I don't often explore the extreme design
fringes for pure casting geeks! Some of the lines I've played with
certainly went a long ways, but didn't have other applications and most
were very difficult to use. I find that the more radical the design the
more tempermental the line and more inconsistent the results. Some very
long casts, but a lot of loop failures too....
A couple of things I need to know first. Is this a floating line (very
important)? What weight line (not as important)?
Also, the line that Steve (and the rest) throw on the 17 ft. distance rod
weighs 1850 grains (56 ft. head). An 11 wt. line weighs 330 gr. at 30 ft.
Adjusted for length, the T-120 tournament line would weigh 990 grains at 30
ft., exactly 3X heavier than an 11 wt. head!
Very interesting Gordy, and maybe when we're done with this I'll make some
of the lines for the group to pass around and play with.....
Bruce
Scientific Anglers/3M
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Bruce: Let's arbitrarily say that we are trying to come up with a floating distance line for an expert caster who is using a 9' 10 wt. Sage TCR rod.
Gordy
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