Overlined my 5wt with 8wt

[Donat]

Felt like experimenting today. Put 8 wt floating on my 7'6" 5wt TFO Pro. Also made one of those furled (twisted) leaders which didn't come out like the video but good enough to try. Fished with a #16 EHC and to my surprise the whole thing worked good. Was a bit windy but was able to throw a line 40'+ in the wind. The only thing that didn't work was the EHC but a good day anyway.

[NJTroutbum]

Rods will throw a number of lines above their ratings. Especially these days with the fast tip-flex actions.

[LadyFisher]

I know everyone has to 'experiment' but, overlining a rod can damage it. They actually are designed to work best with a specific line, that's way they put those funny little numbers on them, like 5 wt. If the rod fails down the line, do you honestly think the manufacturer should honor the guarantee? I would not.

[tailingloop]

A good question to ask is "what constitutes overlining a rod?" In the example Donat presented he cast 40ft of an 8wt line with a 5wt rod. 40ft of an 8wt WF line will put the same load on the rod as around 55 ft of a 5wt WF line give or take a few feet depending on the lines compared. So if he cast 55 ft of the 5wt line on with his rod would he be "overlining" and risking damage. Probably not. The rod doesn't know what number was on the box the line came in. I don't think I have encountered many graphite 5wt rods that would not handle 55 ft of a 5wt line, though a 5ft Fisher brush rod that I had comes to mind. Trying to carry 70ft of an 8wt line with that 7'6" 5wt rod might be a different story.

The rod and line combination is a dynamic system. Changes to the amount of line in the guide and outside the rod tip change the load on the rod during the cast. More line, greater load. Less line, less load. Or if you want a fixed amount of line, an equal amount of a heavier line will increase the load and equal amount of a lighter line will reduce this. So going up (or down) a line size or two or three isn't necessarily a bad thing and there may be a very good tactical reason to do so.

But yes, if you get too much of a line outside the rod tip, you may apply too much of a load to the rod, that is overload the rod, you will end up with bad consequences. This is more likely to happen with a heavier line than the rod's rating, but could even happen with a line with the same rating as the rod. Line taper and the distribution of weight along the length of the flyline means that even all lines of the same weight rating do not load the rod the same. The obvious example would be the differences between a standard weight forward and double taper line. Because of the weight forward line's thinner running line, as you extend longer equal lengths of the WF and DT line, the DT line will impart a greater load on the rod. Or look at the specifications for the fantastic Rio Outbound Short lines. The head on those (first 30ft) are 2.5 to 3 times heavier than the AMFA standards for their designated line weight rating , yet they match up beautifully if the line number is matched to the rod rating without overloading the rod. Overloading a rod is not good. But identifying when a rod is overloaded is not as simple as looking at the label on the line box.


My understanding is that rod designers assign a weight rating to a rod based on the line, typically a WF floater, that will work best with the rod over range of casting loads that they expect that rod will most often be used with. The rod will load optimally with some length of that line outside the tip. Quite often this length is greater than the front 30ft that the line's weight rating is based on. Incidentally, this is why it is typically recommended that when shooting heads of around 30ft in length are employed, the head should be rated about two line sizes heavier than the rod's rating since the thin shooting line does not add much more to the mass of the line. Regardless of the line used, the rod will load differently with less or more line out. If the angler is mostly making a lot of casts that are shorter or longer they may find that they achieve better performance going to a heavier or lighter line for shorter or longer casts respectively. The angler may want to go up a line size or two when casting heavy or wind resistant flies at medium or short distances too since the increased mass of the line will help carry that fly. If they are going to be making short, medium, and long casts during the outing, the rated line is probably the best choice.


I prefer not to use the term 'overlining' because I am not sure what that means mechanically in the dynamic system we use when when cast a line with a rod, though I do understand what people mean when they use that term. I do understand that 'overloading' is not good for the rod. I think more in terms of 'uplining' or 'downlining' when describing the use of lines heavier or lighter than what is printed on the rod shaft.

When selecting a line for a rod, most of the time the best place to start is going to be with a line rated to match the rod's rating. Personally, I would never recommend to a novice anything but a line that matches the rod's rating. But there may be advantages to using a different line in some situations. The angler who understands how different lengths of a line load a rod, how weight is distributed along the line, and how going up or down line size affects the load on rod during the cast for a given length of line will be in a better position to select a line that works best with their rod in different situations.

At what point is a rod overloaded? That's kind of difficult to know for sure. At some point to much of a load will cause it to break during the cast. It probably suffers damage that might shorten its life before that. At some level of load it just does not cast well, though this level will vary with angler skill. I do know that I have a Sage RPLX 9wt and Orvis PM-10 9wt that I have been using for 13 and 14 years respectively casting 30ft 330 to 390 grain shooting heads (equivalent to the 30ft head weights of 11 and 12 wt lines). A conservative estimate would be that both of those rods have made more than 20,000 casts with those lines, pulled on a heck of a lot of fish, and are still going along fine today.

When I assemble my gear for an outing I select lines to use with my rods based on the angling conditions I expect for the day. Much of the time the line rating matches the rods, but sometimes it may be heavier or lighter. Comparing to Donat's example I sometimes use a WF-8-F line on an 8ft 5wt rod. I am fishing for bluegill and bass, casting poppers or other bulky flies from a float tube. The cast is rarely more than 20ft of flyline plus 6ft of leader. The 8wt line loads the rod and turns over the leader and fly nicely at this short distance, much better than a 5wt line. I can do it with a 5wt line but it is not as enjoyable. I could use an 8wt rod but this wouldn't be fun for the bluegill. I also have a spool with a 5wt line if I need to change up and start making longer casts if dictated by conditions, such as casting small streamers to bass busting bait balls in open water.

[Buddy Sanders]

'Loop,

That whole 'overlining hurts the rod' stuff is just an old wives tale with no basis in physics. You are absolutely correct. The rod is designed to load with a certain weight range and that weight range can be reached easily with lines from 3 to 14 on ANY fly rod.

And that 'weight range' the manufacturers mark on the rod is for the optimum performance, not the maximum stress the rod can endure. It's there to make it easier to find the line that will let the rod cast with the least effort at average casting distances. It has nothing to do with over stressing the rod, damaging the rod, or voiding the warranty.

Just think of how much stress a one pound smallmouth puts on the rod, or a five pound trout (basically the same thing ). I've caught thirty inch pike on my 3wt. Didn't damage the rod a bit and that's much more stress than casting a 9 wt. line would put on it. I have a 9 wt. rod that has landed 90 pound sailfish, fifty pound dolphin, and lots of five to eight pound bass....putting a 12 wt. line on the rod will damage it? How?

Just ain't so.

Buddy

[tailingloop]

I do recall one fly rod warrantee that stated that a rod damaged by overloading was not covered. But it didn't explain what actually constituted overloading. A search today of a number of current warrantees did not reveal similar language.

I have observed an angler break a rod while casting a heavy shooting head. The cast was a really poor example of a casting stroke matched with a poorly executed haul. Most of the load went into the tip instead of down the blank and the tip section bent too much and fractured. That rod would not have suffered the same fate with a better executed cast.

[Backcastwards]

Hmmm,
I guess with that "line" of thinking, you wouldn't want to catch a 6 or 7 weight fish on a 5 weight rod.
Gary

[kglissmeyer]

I built an 8-weight for a trip to Alaska a few years ago. I overlined it with a 9-wt wf floater. The guide kept hollering for me to 'double-haul, double-haul' and I said I was trying, but it just wouldn't load. He loaned me his rod and reel with a shooting head floater and a running line and man could I double-haul that rig! I got home and tried a few lines on my 8wt. I found it required a 10wt wf floater to load the rod for any distance, and worked great with a 9wt floating/intermediate tipped line. I guess it depends on the rod, as well as the type of line you're using.

Kelly.

[clarkman23]

I'm sure that a bunch of people have experienced the need to overline a particular rod at some point in their lives. Personally, I have a 5wt, that casts a 7wt really really nice. I haven't tried it with an 8wt, but I'm sure it'd be fine with that as well (this is also a VERY fast action rod). I also have a rod that is labeled as a 7wt, but throws an 8 pretty nicely and really shines with a 9 on it. Even my old Fenwick 807 likes an 8wt line better than a 7. It just depends on the rod, line & individual casting stroke. I don't buy into the "overlining will shorten the life of a rod" argument one bit....if that's really true, then catching a bunch of fish would do the same thing & this just isn't the case. I overline a bunch of my rods, especially the graphite ones and they can still carry more than enough line for me to fish well with them.

anyway, sorry for the redundancy
sorry for the redundancy,

Randy

[JohnScott]

.... that overlining a reasonably good graphite rod by a couple line weights will not likely do any damage to the blank given reasonably good casting skills.

Having said that, I do have a couple observations. Not claiming any "truth" to what follows, just what occurs to me reading through this thread.

First, I believe that graphite rods are designed to "oval" at some point along the blank during casting. If the combination of overlining and poor casting technique combine in a certain way to overstress the blank at that point, it seems likely that they could cause blank failure. That may be why at some time in the past warrantees on rods not built as well as those generally available today did not cover overlining those rods. That may be what happened in the situation described by tailingloop - but maybe it is not such an extreme situation as believed and we all may be getting closer to that point time to time than we realize.

Second, the comments about fish size / weight don't seem relevant to me because of the angle of the rod to the line beyond the tip while tussling with a given fish. Smaller fish can be landed with a relatively high rod tip with no prospect of damage to the blank. However, with larger fish, good fish landing technique suggests a lower rod tip which results in the blank and the line close to horizontal with virtually no stress on the tip of the blank. The stress on the blank with the rod in that lowered tip position is going to be absorbed in the mid and butt sections of the rod, and in the most extreme cases, there will be no stress on the rod at all because it will be parallel to the line and all the load or stress will be on the reel.

Considering the very broad audience a thread like this can have, and the wide range of casting skills people in that audience will have, I think it is the wiser to course to not understate the prospects of damaging a blank by overlining a rod.

John