Walter & Group...
From Troy Miller:-
Wow, I’m perplexed and intrigued by this statement:
Designing a rod that can load and unload at an accelerated rate is the key.
What does Mr. Davison mean by this? Can you ask him for me?
Further, I vehemently disagree with Paul’s statement that tailing loops are not related to stroke length. Since most tails are observed on longer casts, and we ALWAYS have stroke length on longer casts, then tuning stroke length and rod arc and acceleration are the major critical factors that contribute to SLP success or failure. Considering that many of my students (as Allen calls them, converted bass casters) have this tendency to rotate the rod excessively fast early in the stroke, I try to get them to gain line momentum first through mostly translation (with little rotation) and then picking up more rotation (and less translation) later in the stroke as we approach the stop/unload. My primary weapon against tails is to increase stroke length. This may not be a proper fix for a tournament caster, but it works damn well for the intermediate caster who’s trying to get from 50 feet to 75, but tails are killing him. I much prefer this to the band-aid of having him drop the tip out of the way at the stop, pulling down the bottom leg of the loop. JMHO
Regards -- TAM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Troy...
On your first question (Davison's statement) we'll have to ask him. I suspect he may mean a rod which can load sufficiently to carry a particular weight of line.
On Paul Arden's statement that stroke length is, "irrelevent" with respect to the formation of a tail :-
I think he's referring to the linear path of the hand as being of much less importance than the rotation which leads to casting arc. That this linear movement of the hand is truly of zero importance is, I think, a bit of an exaggeration. As a teaching trick, Paul likes to light our fuses !
Your statement agrees with what I wrote in answer to Paul when you call attention to the caster who tails as a result of his tendency to rotate the rod, "excessively fast early in the stroke." To get into student's brains, I sometimes use the wording, "hitting it too hard too soon."
For years we have taught these casters to correct this fault by increasing stroke length .... and it works. This despite the fact that some have called it a, "bandaid-fix".
The reason it works is that it actually gets the caster to increase TIP TRAVEL. This, in turn, makes it less likely that he will use too much power too early yielding rod tip bend because of acceleration which he can't maintain. It is this brief relative deceleration which follows the spike of power that causes the rod tip to quickly bounce up forming a concavity in its path.
One, "cure" is to have the caster increase tip travel which tends to smooth out the cast and (as you point out) makes SLP more likely.
Rare is the caster who can successfully use a casting stroke, casting arc and tip travel much too short for the weight of the line carried. Joe Humphries is one. These casters don't tail despite the short tip travel, BECAUSE THEY CAN MAINTAIN THE ACCELERATION WHICH THEY HAD EARLY IN THE CAST. Thus, they have no, "bounce" back of the rod tip during the cast and no concavity of the path of the rod tip.
Up to recent times, the term STROKE LENGTH has been used by many to mean what we are now calling TIP TRAVEL. I see TIP TRAVEL as just that..... the resultant of both casting stroke and casting arc. Sharpening our fly casting lexicon to what we hope will be more meaningful terms is what our Glossary Committee is working so hard to accomplish. If successful, some day we'll all be talking about the same things as we use these terms.
Thanks for putting some fire into the discussion. That is a great teaching technique !
Gordy