Hi all
I was readng a post on the Winston board. The topic was underlining a BiiX 7 wt. Most of the folks said that the rod performed better with a six weight line! I know users of the Sage RPL+ suggested that the rod worked best when overlined one wt.
So the question is – is the Winston BiiX really a six wt and the Sage RPL+ 8 wt a nine wt?
I would appreciate your comments. Thanks Dave
I’m by no means an expert, but I have seen enough similar posts to have an idea how this works.
First there is no such thing as “true wt” because there are no consistent rules for how to match line and rod. You can do a search on the Common Cents System if you would like to see a proposal for such a system.
Rod makers classify the wt a rod is designed to throw based on how they designed the rod to be used. For a rod designed for small stream trout fishing the rod wt may indicate how the rod performs with only a small amount of line out the tip, for rods designed for the salt where longs casts are the norm the may use significantly more line.
Casting style and usage (how much line you are planning it carry in the air) have a lot to do with what wt works best on a given rod.
Almost all rods currently manufactured will handle at least one wt on either side of the designated rate.
Hope this was helpful.
Rick
As a small flyrod manufacturer in New England we struggle with this everday. In fact we have been discussing a tri-weight labeling system based upon what you feel would be your typical casting distance, ie
5 Weight 30 feet
4 Weight 60 feet
3 Weight 90 feet
This would begin to remove the mystery around line weights. We currently use the CCS system on all our rods and then utilize this as the “median weight” moving forward and adjust from there.
Dave
Great Bay Rod Co.
Dave (mr. bones),
This would make a whole lotta sense. I am glad that your company is stepping up to the plate and even throwing such an idea out there. One “fly” in the ointment, though is that not all “4wt” lines (or pick a weight designation) are the same “weight”. Therefore, you may have to actually lose the “wt” designation altogether and go with a XXX-YYY Grain line at AA feet. And then line manus. will have to list the weights in grains (or oz. or grams or whatever they standardize on). But at least this would be a good start toward that eventual end.
Paul
Thanks – makes sense. But as an additional note I cast the Sage Xi2 8wt at the Mich Fly Show a couple months back with both an 8wt and 9wt line and in the casting pool the rod seemed to the same (to me). So following the thought above, the designation would be x to y grans at 50’.
Thanks for the comments Dave
Fly fishing is made mysterious for many reasons and by many people. However, to make it even more so for the beginner, just tell him you are smarter than the rod makers. If a rod is marked a #5 it doesn’t really mean that. You know better. That should impress him.
So far, I have never found a rod that did not perform best with a line matching the rod number. Watch all the reasons why this is wrong, including the inability to cast being one of them.
Paul,
You are absolutely correct. The line manufacturers have really mucked things up in my opinion with the deviation from the AFTMA line standards that were introduced some time ago. Unfortunately I think they were seeing sales slip because people were not buying new lines fast enough and had to rework line weights to introduce new sku’s onto the marketplace.
It’s confusing enough for a beginner (Just take a look at why this thread was started) to take up fly fishing, and then you add in the “well that’;s not really a standard weight fly line”, or some rod companies saying you need a 600 grain line for our rod. Hello!!??
As a small company we have not retired or discontinued a rod line and refuse to play the confusion game with our clients. We need to get back to basics as an industry if we want to grow this great sport.
I personally think the AFTMA standard should be reviewed and brought up to modern standards, but i’m not sure the industry will allow this “clearing up” to occur.
Dave[size=18][/size]
Another consideration in determining a rod’s line weight range is that AFTMA weights are 20 grains apart, regardless of line size. This means that an 8 and a 9 are much closer (by percentage) than a 1, 2, 3, and 4. In other words, and 1 wt, at 60 gr, is 25% smaller than a 2 at 80gr, which is a huge difference, while an 8, at 200gr, is only 10% lighter than a 9, at 220gr. Sage has made things a bit more confusing, although more sensible, with their sub-wt lines (000-0). IIRC, a 0 is 54gr and a 00 is 48, or something in that range, which means these little lines are really only “light one wts,” and any honest one wt rod should be able to handle all four sizes. It would make much more sense if the line/rod sizes were a set percentage apart. Of course, this would likely result in fewer sizes, and gear-aholics, as well as marketers, would scream about that!
-CC
I was talking to a custom rod maker this week and he said he’s found that as the quality and consistency of fly rods has improved, the variability of fly lines has also increased. He contends that “it’s hard to find a bad rod these days” but there are so many different kinds, weights, and tapers of fly lines that it takes some experimenting to find a line that matches the rod and your casting style. And yes, he also sells fly lines, but encourages his customers to test out a particular line or taper before they buy.
I’m with Castwell on this all the way. We are blessed with some of the best rod designers in the world and yet many outside the rod design business think they know better.
I design rods from the ground up and make blanks from scratch and can tell you that when I tell you, as a rod manufacturer, the rod is a 5 weight, it is a 5 weight. I have a 3 weight that absolutly does not like a 2 weight line or a 4 weight line on it.
For the rod, performance is in the taper. As for casting, most problems are not with a rod with the makers designated line on it, but rather the casting skill of the person casting the rod. Even the most mediocre of rods rod will perform well in the hands of an good caster, but, there is not a top-of-the-line rod in the world that will perform well for a poor caster. Heck, an expert caster can even get some fair performance from a broom stick and a piece of clothesline rope!
It is time to stop bashing the manucacturers over the use of a standard that has been with us and worked well since the advent of nylon fly lines and start to examine and improve our own skills with fly fishing equipment that is the best there havas ever been.
“fishbum logic”
fishbum
I’m with Castwell & fishbum, manufactures spend 10’s of thousands of dollars in R&D to create a rod desinged to cast a line of a specific weight. Yes, you can cast a 10 wt with 2wt line or a 2wt with 10wt line but they are not designed for those purposes. As for one’s “casting style”, “style” has nothing to do with a rods performance. It’s very simple physics, apply X amount of force with Y amount of weight and the rod will flex Z amount, no matter what your “style” is you can’t change the law of physics.
And now this observation from an “expert”, ME 
, who knows all about this kinda stuff. Sometimes to illustrate a point you should stretch the facts to obsurdity. Would a given rod work better being OVERLINED by four wts or UNDERLINED by four wts.?? My answer to this question is that UNDERLINING is better than OVERLINING in THAT case. I therfore deduce that it is favorable in all situations to underline rather than overline. BUT, that being said, I lose no sleep over using the line wt designated by the rod manufacturer. To cast my 40 ft. or so, it just isn’t THAT critical. I’m more interested in the lines’ performance on the water rather than its’ performance in the air.
Mark
Castwell - right again - most any rod will cast okay at it’s rated weight line. True also is the fact that a good caster can go up or down a couple of weights and satisfy his craving for the perfect cast. I think it is cool that a beginner can go to a flyshop and buy a 6 wt rod and line, a 5 X tapered leader and a few Royal Coachman flies, learn some about casting, and go out and catch fish. It is only as their fishing becomes more sophisticated and specialized that they venture outside the box and start to experiment. Then, because of the many dimensions, and plethora of equipment associated with our sport, they realize that some variation outside the box suits them better. Because they love what they do, they want to pass this on to others and sometimes it sounds like they are finding fault with where thy began - a beginner with a six weight. But their heart is in the right place.
Caswell has said that there are many roads to Rome when it comes to getting a fly out on the water and he continues to remind us of that. But remember, we all were beginners at one time. Before we became “Elite.” Not me though - I’d never admit to being elite. It’s just too degrading.
Bobinmich
The rod “is”, in my opinion, whatever weight you feel the most comfortable fishing on it. Does it really MATTER what the rod says? That being said, all but one of my rods throws the designated weight line just fine, and I can up or down one size, usually, and compensate without difficulty. I only have one rod that I feel performs substantially better if uplined one line weight, and it is a long 8 (9) wt.
DG
Lots of thoughts in this thread. Some good, some not so good. My experience has been that most modern-era trout rods do cast well with the manufacturer’s rated line weight. I have not found this to be generally true with saltwater rods though. If often have to overline them by one size. I do think manufacturers have taken liberties with the AFTMA standards. In fact, I don’t think that there is any organization that holds them to these standards. The standard provided a nominal grain weight for each size and an allowable deviation from the nominal weight. I have weighed lines and found some to be well beyond the allowable deviation. This does the consumer a disservice in that when it comes time to replace a line, he may not get the same behavior from the replacement line. Also, someone mentioned that the AFTMA line weights are 20 grains apart. This is only true for 1 to 6 weight lines. Beyond that, the steps progressively increase.
…dammit, I swore when I saw this thread the other day, and almost punched my computer’s screen when I read some of the replies…
IF, every rod performs best at the designated weight, why, in their advertising, or the tech section of their website or catalogs for those that don’t advertise it, do the line manufacturers make lines a half or three-quarters weight heavier… “to load todays modern rods?”
…if, fly rods perform best with the “designated” line weight, why are all the line manufacturers producing lines that are…“one-half to three-quarters line weight heavier to ‘load todays modern rods’…?” It’s in their own advertising in Cabela’s, Feather-Craft, Orvis catalogs and in the specs section of their website or company catalogs.
Isn’t this automatic ‘overlining’…ooooops.
The Sage RPL+ was specifically mentioned as a rod that some people like to “overline.” I have a Sage RPL+, an 8 1/2 foot, 5 weight. It’s the rod I use the most. I use the good old Cortland 444, peach, double taper, and in the 5 wt, as designated. And I think it’s PERFECT. The 5 weight line seems ideally matched to the rod.
It may depend on the rod, though, and on the preference and casting style of the angler. A friend of mine bought some high end Orvis rod, I don’t recall the model. It was rated for a 4 weight line. And he didn’t like the way it cast, he just couldn’t get used to it, and he had spent a lot of money to buy it. He talked to the local shop about it, and they had him go out behind the shop and try a 5 weight line on the rod, and he loved it, and has been fishing a 5 weight line on it ever since and is 100 percent pleased with it now.
So I think it’s OK to be flexible and consider overlining. It helped my buddy.
Here’s something I’ve thought about doing, but haven’t, yet. I prefer “fast action” rods, i.e. rods that are real cannons. I have not experienced the problem many complain about, that the rod won’t load. Probably because of my casting style, which is “vigorous.”
The thing is, “fast action” rods are quite expensive. Why not buy a less expensive, slower action rod, and underline it? If you bought a lower modulus 8 1/2 ft, 6 wt, but used a 5 weight line on it, would the casting action approximate the expensive, fast action 8 1/2 foot 5 weights? Has anyone tried this?
…my duplicate post is due to a computer cliche…anyway…
troutbert: On another site, the Administrator obtained a grain-gram, whatever scale used to weight the first 30-35 feet of a weight forward line and found all the major manufacturers lines overweight. One companys’ 6wt. was actually an 8wt.
All the double taper lines weighed came out to the proper weight.
What’s that all about?
The truth is, casting 23 feet of #8 line is about the same loading as casting 30 feet of #6. So if you can’t cast the rated line on the rod that it was designed for, you probabaly cant’t cast short either. There is a big difference between “need” and “like.” I would “like” an H2 but I don’t “need” it. And the reason there are so many variations in line weight is the the fact that we think we can fix everything with equipment just by buying something different. I’ll bet Castwell could cast everything from a 3 wt line to a 9 wt line on his 5 wt “Z” and if that was all he had, he wouldn’t complain.
That being said, I overweight all my high modulus fresh water rods by a line wt just because I “like” the way they load on shorter casts. And most of the streams I fish are smaller. I can cast the rated lines just fine though. So I don’t “need” to do that. But all you guys that like the heavier lines ar right too. For you.
This is a dumb argument. I don’t know why I posted. Sorry.