Selecting a Reel for a New Rod - Balancing

[Silver Creek]

Reply Part 2:

Now lets move on to rod/reel balance. I quote the http://www.flyfishohio.com/a_question_of_balance.htm

"Bad balance made casting this stick a chore and limited my best distance to something under 60 feet. Changing the physical balance turned my sow's ear into something much closer to the silk purse I'd hoped for."

This is a fallacy that keeps getting repeated. That you need the reel to balance the rod during fly casting. He goes on to write,

"Now let's assume the St. Croix rod and a premium line roasted your budget so you opted for a Pflueger Medalist 1494 instead. This is a great choice. That reel weighs 5.4 ounces. Now your loaded rig is just a bit lighter than the swing weight of the rod. Such a small discrepancy isn't the end of the world, but it can make the Avid feel just a bit clunky in the hand. If you add one or two tenths of an ounce to the reel you can return it to that quick, responsive feel. This is easy to do - simply remove the line and backing and wind on 30 feet of 28 pound test lead core trolling line around the spool and then put the backing and line back on."

First of all swing weight is NOT the overall weight of the fly rod so adding the mass of a reel CANNOT decrease swing weight. Any reel has mass and any mass added to the the rod as it rotates through the cast INCREASES the swing weight. You CANNOT DECREASE the Moment of Inertia by ADDING a mass which INCREASES INERTIA.

Rod balance is important in fishing and not in casting.

That is why a French nymphing DVD says to balance the outfit with a heavy reel. This results in an outfit that is tip-light/butt-heavy when the line/leader system is out. You don't need to force a tip heavy rod/reel into a tip up position for fishing.

The outfit may be heavier over all, but you are not fighting the natural balance of the rod/reel to keep it tip up during fishing.

The rod/reel/line should be balanced for the type of fishing you do with the amount of line you would normally have out. If you mainly fish streamers from a boat as musky fly fishers do in the USA, you want a tip heavy set up.

If you keep your rod level most of the time or do all kinds of fishing so the rod angle varies, you want a neutral balance point withe the nominal amount of line out of the rod tip.

One can also adjust the static balance point by holding the rod higher or lower on the rod grip once the cast has been made to account for the amount of fly line out.

Whenever the question of rod and reel "balance" is raised, there are those who will maintain that the reel balances the rod during the cast. This is a carry over from spin and casting rods and reels where the line weighs virtually nothing AND the cast is always made when the line has been wound all the way in. So in spin and casting rods a reels the amount of line and the weight of the combined line and reel is fixed. Regardless of the length of the cast, the rod and reel has a fixed balance point.

This is not so with fly casting. The amount of line varies during the cast and the length of line that is cast will vary from cast to cast. In addition, when we pick up line and recast , we do not start with all the line back on the reel. Indeed, it is advantageous to begin with some line out of the rod tip. So the balance point is not fixed but varies throughout the cast.

Secondly, there is the mistaken belief that a "balanced" fly casting outfit will somehow allow us to cast further and more effectively. This is not true. In reality, a rod without a reel with the line lying loosely on the ground is the most efficient way to cast. The reason is that the reel and line held on the reel contribute nothing to the cast. They actually hinder the cast by adding mass to the casting system that has to be accelerated and decelerated during the cast. Remember that the laws of physics state that any extra mass added to the rod/reel/line system INCREASES the Moment of Inertia and increases the amount of energy (torque) that is required to cast the line a given distance.

If the cast were made like a teeter totter with a pivoting of rod at the balance point, I can see the need for the counter weight of the reel. But that is not how a cast is made. The power stroke of the cast is made with the wrist locked and not with the rod pivoting like a windshield wiper.

Part 3 to follow