This is part of a e-mail that I recently sent to one of the board menbers following the same line of thought.
There are two facts of life:
1. The simple matter of life is that distance sells fly rods.
2. When it comes to speycasting, performance sells speyrods.
When it comes to the speycasting, might I add one thing?
Try to learn to cast before you buy a rod.
This way, over time, you will get a chance to cast more than one rod.
River Run Anglers’ Day on the River program is a good place to learn, and the best part is it is free. (I know everone is budget minded.)
First we must lay out some of the performance physics. Overhead is normal style of casting and takes place it a two dimensional world. Speycasting on the other hand works in three-dimensional world.
In other words the overhead cast is made with a forecast and back cast. A speycast is made with a forecast, backcast and an anchor so we say that it
has three detentions.
Here is a look at how a speyrod should be judged:
1. We must ask the rod to more that just move in a straight line as you would with an overhead cast.
2. Quick is a new word to rate performance of spey rods and should be looked as a key factor when looking to purchase a spey rod. Your rod has to be designed to do dampen out as quickly as possible thus the term quick. You are basically asking the top sections of the rod to do more that just move a straight line as you would with an overhead cast. If the rod dose not dampens quickly enough, the tip will be out of alignment when you go to deliver your forward cast causing a slack in the d-loop or, worse yet, secondary loop in the forward cast. (Both of these are performance-robbing characteristics.)
3. In other movements for repositioning the line, you will find that you have performance problems due to slack forming. Slack is the killer of all casts whether overhead of speycast and should be avoided at any cost.
Let us look at performance:
Since there is no standard, here are my views on graphite build up of rods dealing with performance. If a rod says it IM-Something: meaning all the sections or is one IM-Something and the other sections some other grade of Graphite. The other case is one of multi-layered build up of rods. Here one layer of one section could be IM-Something and the rest of lay-up of the section or the rod could any thing the manufactures wanted it to be. The lay-up of a rod can also cost money.
Is the rod made up of one layer or multi-layers? Is the rod laid up of multi layers going of graphite all the same direction or, are they ply-oriented?
Ply-orientation meaning that the each layer of graphite fabric ply is rotated in the direction of the fibers giving greater resistance to bending. Here again different ply rotations could be of varying types of material of different modules of tensile elasticity. Each one of these features add to the cost of production
Looks can be deceiving.
In the past, I have sanded down quality blanks to remove the manufacture’s company’s color. I then I built it up without different furniture on to see what the general response was when comparing the same rod with one in the factory colors. (The sanding did not take away any performance, but the comments were just what I thought they would be.)
Most of caster picked the new rod apart but when they casters use the same model with factory colors on it the loved it.
Go figure
Aaron