Shooting Head weight for an 8wt LC-13.
I just started messing around with shooting heads on my eight weight. I bought 30' of LC-13 and got some running line. I have read alot, spooled it up and took it out to the lawn to get the feel for it. 30' was way to heavy for the 8wt so I cut down 3' to make it 27'(351grains). I read that you should not go below 27' because the line will "dump" at the end of the foward cast. Can someone explain dumping to me? I am had trouble with the weight of the head..the rod is like a stick in the mud and the head will collapse on itself on the foward cast. I found my 8wt can handle that much. I cut it down to 25' (325grains) and it feels better can cast about 60'-70' with it but I have to do what I found out is called a belgian cast. It still feels really overloaded. This is my first time trying out any sort of shooting head. Is the rod supposed to feel very overloaded with them? Was it a bad idea to cut it down to 25'? I think that 22' (286grains) would be perfect but don't want to go too short if the "dump" is as bad as it sounds. Any ballpark weight for 8wts? and last in my long list of questions what is a good leader length for heads like this? Sorry about all the questions, figured I would ask here because they seem to be used more in salt but I just wanted to have a spool ready in case I get out of town or get into a situation where it would work well.
Thanks,
Janus
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