After I finished my 8 wt. I anxiously bought an 8 line and was set. So I’d hoped. When I showed the rod to a fellow at a fly shop for his apprasial of the rod, he used several lines on it and determined the best performance was a 10 line. Had I waited I would have bought a 10- wt. line from him, but I guess I was a bit greedy. Last week I found a discounted 10 forward weight line and am putting it onto the reel. I don’t have any problems doing so. However, my 6 wt. rod has floating, forward weight line in dire need of replacement. My easy answer was to simply install the 8 wt. line on the 6 wt. rod. What are the expected minuses or problems I can expect from doing so? This is a St. Croix Pro Grafite that should be rated fairly close to its intentions, where as the blank was advertised as an 8, which the shop admitted might be conservative. I’ll await your answers. JGW
I’ve been curious about the overlining/underlining thing in the past. Here’s my two cents.
First, you probably know that here are standards for determining the weight of a line. It’s determined by how much the first 30 feet or so of the line weighs. The Cortland line website has some good information on this and has a table describing how much a 3-weight line is suppposed to weigh, how much a 4-weight line weighs and so.
The way I’ve come to think about the overlining thing is that rods are designed to cast “best” with a certain amount of weight in the “air”. If you put a 7-weight line on a 6-weight rod, you reach that point with less line in the air, so-to-speak. If you put an 8-weight line on a 6 weight rod, you reach that point with even less line.
The conclusion is that when overlined, a rod loads better on short casts, and breaks-down a bit on longer casts. The converse could also be true, a rod might perform better when casting at distance when it is underlined.
All that being said, the weight designation is up to the manufacturer – so the answer partly depends on the rod and how the manufacter decides what weight line is best. In this case, I guess that would be the maker of the blank.
I decided not to fool around with overlining and underlining rods myself – partly because I think the manufacturer weight designation is probably the right choice under most common fishing conditions.
After all that, I guess I should have just said you gotta try it and see. I doubt it will hurt the rod.
[This message has been edited by BigFlatBrook (edited 17 April 2005).]
Like BFB said, it won’t hurt the rod. Heck, you’re running around with the rod trying to hook and play the largest danded fish in the water anyway. Whats a few grains of weight more in a line?
Like JC commenting on face-wind helping someone realize the load on the backcast better, I think, maybe to a certain extent, over-lineing can do the same…make it easier to feel the rod load.
When useing shooting heads it is almost necessary to up-line. Though now some manufacturers are “down marking” to really confuse those of us with very limited mental function. 
I have one rod that I “underline” on a regular basis because it simply casts a lighter line better when you are casting a long line. That’s how I ususally use this rod. On another [a St Croix LU] I found that I don’t really like “fast” rods after I bought it. I know - cast B4 buying! And I did but casting for a short time on the grass is completely different from fishing the rod for a day or so. I can’t feel the thing load and I have to “work” more with this rod than my older rods. So I overlined it. It slowed the action down 'til I can finally feel it when I cast. Don’t have to pay so much attention to my casting. I like easy.
I think the “mfgr’s line weight” is a suggested weight and may very well be different for different casters. The only to find out is to try it.
Just my $.09 worth [inflation, you know]
Donald
I have a St. Croix, Imperial that is rated as a 5 Wt. and it simply didn’t feel “alive” with a 5 wt. line. I put my reel with a 6 wt. line on that rod and did it ever come to life. I asked a similar question to yours on another board and received responses similar to what you have received. General consensus seems to be try a heavier or lighter line. The rod will tell you what it likes. Ain’t gonna hurt nuthin’.
Vic
John
While I’m not a big fan of over lining, I think there is something to be said about finding a line that matches the rod. I have a St Croix 8’ 5wt PG. I’ve tried different weight lines and my preference is still a 5wt line. About all you can do is try the 8wt and see how you like it. I suspect it will load your rod more and you will loose some distance when casting.
for the most part I trust the munufacturers specs and I’ve had few problems.I have an 8 wght pro graphite and I really battled to feel it loading until I either aerialised ALOT of line or lined up to a 10,so I guess it’s really a matter of personal preference.
I generally agree with JC on this topic but will offer a varied point of view here. If the 8wt you built has less weight on it, (lighter, fewer, or single footed guides, less thread, less epoxy, stiffer ferrules) then you may need to bump up one line weight to get it to flex well.
However, you also keep in mind that a heavier line does not inherently fly better into the wind, a tighter loop does. To understand why, think of a golf ball versus a tennis ball. The golf ball weighs roughly 1.6 oz and the tennis ball weighs roughly 2 oz. If you teed them both up and whacked them with a Big Bertha, which would you expect to go farther? The golf ball will, due to its reduced wind resistance even though it weighs less. Casting loops work the same way.
With equal size loops, the 8wt line will be more effective at beating the wind than the 6wt, but overlining a rod generally results in bigger loops, not smaller ones. The greater weight puts more flex in the rod, which generally increases the distance between the top and bottom of the loop.
An 8 wt line will turn over a big/heavy fly better, but that’s another matter all together.
I have cast those pro graphite rods and don’t think they should be double-overlined.
Hi there White The one thing that has not been brought up that you may need to consider… You may be doing some damage to the rod. No one is sure how many time you can bend a fly rod before you Fatuge the blank. But experts do agree that every time you bend it some life is gone and the more stress you put on it each bend the more life that go’s By over lineing a rod X 2 you may be slowly breaking your rod. There is a fair amount of testing that goes into a rod line match and with very few exceptions the rod companys are right and the shops are wrong!!
Food for thought
Rich
The lifetime of graphite is very long, unless it’s abused. Heat, such as storing in the trunk of your car in the summer, can cause it to break down. Chips can weaken the wall. But it ought to perform for many, many years otherwise. Personally, I doubt the fibers degrade much, if at all, during casting, even if overlined.
If it were a bamboo rod, I would think differently about it.
John,
I say “if it feels good, do it”, to coin a phrase. I overline my 2 wt carp rods with a 3 wt. line because I’m more often than not casting short distances and I want the rod to load with a short line. Also, I have an 8 wt. Sage Xi2 that I like a whole lot better with a 9 wt. SA GPX line (my favorite line) than the same 8 wt line. If you’re casting short distances a lot, or with big bugs, you may want to overline but if your trying to boom out long casts from a boat for, say, stripers or surfacing sandbass, you may want to stick with the line recommended for the rod. Experiment and see what feels good to you. I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules here.
You all may want to stay tuned and read Tom Kirkman’s article next week on the Easiest Way to Break a Rod…complete with photos.
Is ‘overlining’ in there?
LadyFisher, Publisher of
FAOL
White43 - Here’s the kind of situation where I sometimes get “yelled” at 'cause I’m “in the business” and some folks somehow seem to occasionally take some offense at an industry type wading in here - tho it almost NEVER happens here, on FAOL, thank goodness.
I’ve been a sales rep for some major FF companies for approaching 20 years now,one of them being the by-far leading producer of premium rods, so believe me, I’ve seen and heard a TON about overlining rods.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE read JC’s gruff reply, and Big Cliff’s reply, and PLEASE believe 'em.
Cliff’s is THE VERY BEST 3 paragraphs on the subject I have ever read or heard in my over 45 years of flyfishing. I wish he’d been my high school physics teacher.
If the rod says it’s an 8 weight … well, it is. At least it is to the rod designer. There’s a good chance that a particular rod “family” might be far too fast or far too slow for a customer’s casting style, but that’s definitely NOT saying fast or slow is right or wrong.
You won’t “wear out” the graphite in your rod by bending it. Given today’s resins, it has a life span of …oh, several eons or more. You WILL, quite possibly, break the puppy off right at the cork if you cast out 70 feet of 10 weight line on your 8 weight rod, and then try to heave all that line up off the water. I’ve done exactly that. I know it can happen.
Cary
Why does everybody buy these high tech mod-fast to fast action rods and then overline them(in essence slowing them down)? I don’t get it…
If feeling the rod load is reason, wouldn’t it just be better to buy a softer action rod and keep the “right” line on it? Or maybe develop a better ability to feel the rod load?
That said, there can be a variance in what the optimal line is for a blank and what the manufacturer’s stated line wt is( see [url=http://www.superbob.org/CC_Data.htm:0c199]http://www.superbob.org/CC_Data.htm[/url:0c199] for a list of blanks analyzed using Dr’ Bill Hanneman’s Common Cents system). But if I bought a 3wt from a shop and found out that it was really best with a 4 or 5 wt line, I’d be a little ticked off…
Charlie
[This message has been edited by chascomly (edited 19 April 2005).]
xi,
Are you sure there were not other underlaying factors that could have contributed to the failure of the rod you mention?
We have reefed quite extensively on an albacore that was approaching 30#-35# with a 9wt, and I KNOW for sure that the rod had never even been close to being that stressed tossing ANY concoction of lines we use. As a matter of fact, the rod still tosses big bushy bass and striper bugs just fine, whether we’re tossing a chunk of LC or an up-lined floater. But then we ain’t too good at casting, so we may not know the rod is “off”.
We have under-wrapped or double-wrapped a couple rods because we know the abuse ours must stand. One is a 8’9" 3wt LL series. It had withstood the task of bringing to hand a 20# plus stingray that got snagged while we were targeting halibut in the bay. It still does fine tossing for BG’s, even. Had to poop-can the reel though.
…lee s.
Grand poo-bah - If he does wrap the rod as in Big Cliff’s quote - lighter guides, etc. - then the tip has less swing weight, so it will likely feel a little faster. That would be a bit more apparent to a very old and “practiced” hand, but faster none the less.
But,I’m NOT saying that he should then go up a line size. That goes back to there being no absolute right or wrong as to “fast” or “slow”. The rod just needs to perform as the user thinks he WANTS it to perform. And that individual preference is so darned subjective, I won’t say “it’s now a 9 weight”.
Related thought — As interesting and thoughtful and detailed as some system like the Common Cents formulas (just as a for instance) might be, the creator of some given “system” of rod-rating still starts out with, or is influenced by THEIR subjective sense as to how a fly rod “should” bend or load. So the system works very well for them & their style of casting, but perhaps less well for the next guy.
It just means that the manufacturers have to offer an assortment of "styles’ or “families” of rods that cover a broad spectrum of casting-style preferences. It’s become a dazzling array of choices, but the huge selection available these days means that sometimes the customer ends up getting the “wrong” style of rod.
That could bring up a whole other can of worms regarding how well or how badly a customer is listened to or attended to in a shop, but I ain’t going to get into that here.
This part relates to lee s’s post as well about reefing on big Albies:
No. I don’t believe that actual fatigue-of-the-graphite will occur by overlining a rod, assuming just “normal” casting distances (whatever the heck “normal” means).And here I’m talking about rather recent, modern rods using current, state-of-the-art resins which are WAY more flexible and much more able to keep the graphite strands glued together than rods from say, the 80’s.
As to my exploding-at-the-cork 8 weight,I was talking about sudden,quick, massive overloading versus the relatively smooth cycle of a “normal” cast, or putting a bend in the rod to fight fish.
There’s a great big ol’huge difference in what the rod “experiences” when you’re bending a rod waaaay over fighting a fish, as opposed to what the quick shock to it is when trying to pick up off the water what turns out to be waaaay too much line. It’s a momentum thing - or a lack thereof.
If Big Cliff will chime in here, his inimitable grasp of physics-put-to-words can 'splain best what my feeble words struggle with.
(By the way, lee s, what in the WORLD were you doing using a 3 weight to fish for Halibut??)
Cary
Sorry xi,
Even though we accept the responsibility of our ways, and expect warranty deletions (is that a word? ), we are a pain for some manufacturers. We usually do stuff all bass ackwards anyway and it IS amazing what rods WILL stand up to.
Heck, if we don’t break’em, how do we expect to justify the purchase of a “new” one to the bride!
I overline all of my rods. Having said that, I also build all my own and use only IM6 blanks. I like moderate rods and the IM6 blanks are plenty strong to handle 1 or even 2 sizes of line over the rating. Especially since most rods these days are labeled incorrectly so that they can be in on the fast is better craze. Bottom line, any rod will cast several different line sizes at different distances. The rod doesn’t know if it’s throwing 70’ of 8wt or 50’ of 10wt line since they will both weigh about the same. This is why the common cents system is so great. It enables us to make informed decisions on what line weight will work best at our “normal fishing distances”. I fish a Forecast 7.5ft 4pc 4wt blank with a 6wt line because at the 40ft distances I fish, it loads the rod beautifully and practically casts itself. I find that with a WF4 line, it’s just too much work. I’m not sure about possible blank failures that this would cause with the newer “high modulus” blanks, but I don’t have to worry since IM6 graphite suits me just fine.
Lou
Cary, Thanks for the compliment. You may be proud to know I got the largest part of my education in this sport from the team of Bruce, Rick, and the Rev. in San Antonio. If I was still there, you would have a retail rep who doesn’t think the TCR is too fast.
Regarding the explanation of physics, I have tried to express that same thought many times on various posts and just now figured out how to best illustrate the point. Unfortunately, I am not as confident in my ability to explain this next issue, but I’ll take a shot.
I am sure, however, that it has to do with the force being applied both so suddenly, and with increasing pressure. Say you have a rod bent into a 90 total bend already and a fish makes a one foot surge. As it surges farther, it will be fighting greater resistance from the rod and its velocity will most likely decrease. This is similar to the way a shock on a vehicle works. As the gas is further compressed, there is more resistance keeping the vehicle from bottoming out. If they tried to make shocks as light as we do fly rods, they might explode under extreme force too.
The gradual reduction in velocity due to increased rod or shock load is different from the casting motion which you described because you were undoubtedly accelerating through the casting stroke, rather than slowing, as would a rod-fighting fish. This means the force on the rod would be increasing at an increasing rate, rather than gradually topping out. You are overpowering the strength of the rod, which is to be expected. After all, you are using the grip of 70 feet worth of surface tension and the strength of a grown man against a hollow 5 oz stick.
How’s that?
Xi…Yes, the CC system may start from one person’s thought of what a “X” wt rod should feel like(there is a little more than this to it however). Once you know how the system applies itself, you’ll be able to determine what weight rod you want based on the data. The system allows itself to be carried through to ANY type of rod. So, instead of dealing with what Sage’s rod designer thinks is a fast 4 wt, and what Lefty thinks is a fast 4wt, and what loomis’s rod designer thinks is a fast 4wt, you have one point of reference to go to allowing you to compare all of them with a bit of science versus subjectivity.
Charlie
[This message has been edited by chascomly (edited 21 April 2005).]