|
Well, I don't often get upset about things; ok, sometimes I do, but I don't get
on here and spout off about them. BUT, here we go.
I know a whole bunch of folks who manufacture stuff for fly-fishing. Great people,
really. They work hard to produce things for us that actually perform as they claim.
They try to keep the profit margin down, so the stuff will sell, and we all win. They
make enough bucks to stay in business, and we get to buy the things we need to
fly-fish. Good working relationship.
I know for a fact that they go way beyond any reasonable limits to take care of
guys who claim, "It was defective." I know they honor many requests for
replacement for stuff they absolutely know was in no way
defective. But, they want to keep us all happy. You know of guys who have
claimed the rod broke on a fish, or casting, when you saw it break pulling a
fly out of a tree etc. The manufacturers are great about trying to bend over
backwards in our favor.
It is about time someone clued a few of you in on a practice that can shred,
crack, ruin, destroy, mess-up, and in general, wreck a fly line. It happens
every day. On TV, in casting-videos, is shown by casting instructors, is seen
on streams country-wide, and is considered as common practice by far more
than it should be.
I wish I could think of a good name for it, but I can't. These days it seems
that if you are a writer, you are supposed to come up with nifty names for
everything. Well, let someone else name it then, I don't have one. But, I will
ask you this. Do you like to hear your reel screech several times while you try
to get some line in the air? Do you like to have to rip line off of it in little bursts
while at the same time trying to get some of it to go into the cast? Does it make
you feel good that you are dragging the line over the support on the reel and
bending it about 160 degrees (which of course will not crack the lines coating)?
Have you ever really looked at the brace at the bottom of your reel? Is it sharp?
Ya, right.
It just grabs me to see it over and over again, the right arm raises, goes into the
back-cast, the left hand rips line down and off to the left at the same time, and
then the guy feeds the line into the forward cast. Then, back goes the right hand,
the left rips more line off of the spool, down and to the left and feeds it into the
cast.
Boy, I am sure glad I do not make fly lines for a living. Because when these
guys then send in a line and howl, "Gee, yer line is a piece of &%#@, used
it one summer and it cracked all to *%@$"! Ya, right. Learn how to cast.
And learn how to take line off of a reel while you're at it. Pull it off
first, then cast!
Bless the folks at the companies who make fly lines. They must be saints for
not telling guys the truth about why the line cracked, shredded, failed, or went
to pot.
On the other hand, I wonder why they don't include instructions on how to
do it right?. ~ JC
Till next week, remember ...
|
