Well, it has been pointed out to me that I am a complete idiot who knows nothing about casting. So, as mentioned in my last post, I'll just stay on the sidelines and let the "experts" have it.

Rex

Oh, sorry Dave. I have trouble with your sense of humor sometimes. I'm sure it would be easier to follow if I knew you in "real life." These boards can be really tough when it comes to conveying nuance. I get bitten in the posterior by that myself quite a bit.

I’m in the “up-lining camp” with LHD and Rex on this one.

And this is why moderating here is such a cakewalk.If I got paid for moderating I'd feel guilty taking the money. Civility goes a LONG WAYS.

George,

I'm actually in that "camp," too.

The reason it is easier to feel the rod load when up-lined is because the rod is loading more deeply with less effort and the "sweet spot" has moved DOWN the taper toward the butt section of the rod/away from the tip. This transfers more of the stress of the lever's work closer to your hand.

The mechanics of all of this also mandates that the time it takes the rod to unload slows down. (more weight beyond the tip = slower to unload and recover to rod stop or rod neutral position...a smart-sounding way of saying "straight and finished vibrating") When rod-geeks say "fast, medium, slow" about fly rod action, this is what they are referring to: the amount of time it takes the rod to recover from an identical load.

Thus, over-lining slows the rod action AND makes it easier to feel the rod load. My point was simply that the dirth of fast action rods on the market and casting teachers who really only know how to cast fast action rods well is what is making over-lining so popular. And "old school" anglers are more and more finding themselves having to radically over-line modern rods (2 or more line-weights) to get the desired action out of them...especially for short-distance work.

To sort of get this back on topic, I will add that this is one of the advantages of the switch rod: versatility. It really is 2 fly rods in 1. Add an array of fly lines, and you've got a pretty darned complete arsenal!

Thanks Ken for your lengthy explanation, but it's really not necessary.
I fully understand the mechanics of fly rods.
My first flyrod was a "slow" action bamboo purchased in 1951.

OOPS .... forgot to mention, the last 9, 10, and 12 wt flyrods I built were Sage RPLX blanks.
A long fighting butt on the 9 wt makes a great "switch"rod.

Good explanation, this ought to go in a "Fly Rods, Theory Of" thread.

thank you Ken

You're welcome, Robin.

Just passing along stuff I've learned from others. I've spent a lot of time in the past 5 years or so with a bunch of real experts in this field: Dave Whitlock, Davy Wotton, Bob Stehwien(MCI), Brian Ellis(MCI), Bruce Richards(CBOG), Lefty Krey(CBOG), Capt. Paul Sodamann(MCI), Allen Crise(MCI), Rick Pope, Charlie Reading, etc. And they've been immensely helpful in my development of adaptive fly casting strategies for the disabled, which I based on Bill Gammel's(CBOG) "Five Essentials of Fly Casting."

I have to say that Dave Whitlock, Allen Crise, and Bob Stehwien have had the most profound influence on me, and that I view Gammel's book as the holy scripture of fly casting instruction.

I used to think a lot of this detailed discussion of casting, lines, and fly rod science was a big waste of time and effort. But when I started working with disabled folks who wanted to fly fish, I soon realized I had to put more tools in my tool box. I turned to some of the aforementioned fellas for help and pretty quickly realized something very special:

The more I knew about this stuff the better caster I became, and the better caster I became the more fun I was having fishing!

And isn't that what we're all looking for: more fun fishing?

That doesn't mean everybody needs to be a master caster to have fun fly fishing! But it does mean that the better caster you become, the more the wonderful wide world of fly fishing will truly open up to you. After all, putting the fly in front of the fish in a way that is enticing to him is about 85% of the battle in fly fishing. And what is fly casting but putting the fly in front of the fish?

Bob Stehwien pointed out to me that there are 6 elements to a fly cast: the fly, the leader, the fly line, the fly rod, the caster, and the environment. You have to know something about all 6 to gain control over fly casting. And you have to have some mastery of all 6 to be a master fly caster. I thought that was pretty profoundly obvious and obviously profound. LOL

I don't always answer questions on bulletin boards just for the person(s) I'm actually talking to. And that sometimes gets me in "trouble." As a writer, I'm always conscious of the wider audience. It's an occupational hazard. I don't talk the way I write. So...sometimes...when I am posting on forums, I am misunderstood because it is assumed that I am ONLY replying to the previous poster when I am actually speaking in a much broader context. It's my fault. But it's a habit I find very difficult to break because I spend so much time writing in that mode. But my goal is simply to help those who aren't as far down the path as I have traveled. I've been fly fishing now for a mere 30 years...not all of it aggressively, mind you. But I've been able to dedicate something very near the range of full time to it for the past 6 years and 1/2 of every year to it for the 5 years prior to that. I have lived within a stone's throw of a river for the past 13 years and on the beach for 2 years before that. So it is quite natural that I am in possession of more experience than many who read fly fishing content on the internet - and that some possess even more than I do! But I think we ALL are well served when we try to aid those coming along behind us.

I know it sure has helped me!

The best way to learn something is to teach it.

For additional information to supplement Ken’s excellent discourse on fly fishing tackle, I would strongly recommend to our forum friends to access Dan Blanton’s Tackle and Technique pages for a wealth of information.

http://www.danblanton.com/tack_tech.html

Dan is a renowned west coast FF Hall of Famer, writer, photographer, and guide with worldwide experience that has contributed more to saltwater and warm water FF than anyone I know.

He shares his knowledge freely on his forum and if you ever have a chance to share a day on the lake or a stream with Dan, it will be a worthwhile experience.

His name should be included in Ken’s list.

“But I think we ALL are well served when we try to aid those coming along behind us”.

Hey, George. I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Dan in person. So I couldn't include him on my list. But I'm glad you brought him up. I've read some of his articles, and they were great. But I've actually gotten lessons and spent a lot of time discussing casting, equipment, the industry, the culture, and the history of fly fishing with everyone on my list except Lefty and Bruce. I just got a lesson from each of them.

All right, I've bit my tongue long enough.



I would argue that:

a) Casting teachers are not making overlining popular. Nor have I ever met a casting teacher who only had the ability to cast a "fast action" rod. Not that I've met them all mind you, I'm just very confused by your continual attacks on casting teachers.

b) "Uplining" and "overlining" only mean running a line on a rod greater than its rating, it doesn't mean people don't know how to cast and it's not any indication of experience or skill.

c) There is nothing radical about uplining for consistently short shots. In fact, it's just plain dumb not to.



Glad to hear you name drop on Bruce, you need to have a conversation with him on "uplining". There was at one time an exceptionally good post on this subject on Sexy Loops, but I can't access that site from where I'm at so I can't reference it. Nor do I know if it still exists.

I won't try to paraphrase Bruce but I'll try to cover the concept as simply as possible:

Let's assume that it would be ridiculous to try to always be exactly 30 feet from your target. I mean, what if you can't cross that current in that mountain stream, or you can't wade out to within exactly 30 feet of your target in the surf because it's too deep, or what if you are site fishing and there is a fish 15 feet in front of you and a wall behind you?

Imagine a world where you can only cast if the target is exactly 30' away.

Ridiculous, isn't it?

So what do you do? If the target is 40 feet away you might aerialize 30 feet and shoot 10. What if the target is 80 feet away? Well you aren't going to aerialize 70 feet and shoot 10, at least most casters aren't. You might aerialize 50 feet and shoot 30 though.

Well, surprisingly enough, 50 feet of fly line aerialized is going to load a rod more than 30 feet of fly line. Will you have to pause longer between strokes to allow 50 feet of fly line to unroll before making your next stroke? Well, yes of course you will, just like it takes longer to drive 20 miles than it does 10.

Did that extra line/weight/time make the rod faster or slower? I actually don't care, it's irrelevant to my reality of fishing and casting.

What is relevant is that unless you are always casting an exact amount of line on a specified rod you will never be dealing with a constant load on the rod. Another relevancy is that different rods will vary just how much load they need before they can help the caster (as a tool) direct the cast they need to, be it long, or short.

The majority of my time spent fishing is site casting to carp. The fish where I like to go are small carp, like 2-4 pounds average. There will be a few kicker fish to 12 pounds or so in the year, but day in day out the targets are 3,4 pound fish. A 4 weight is plenty of rod to handle the fish. A 4 weight line is plenty to handle the flies I throw at the fish.

Problem is, though, due to light levels, water clarity, necessity to cast accurately and quietly, I'm often making a 15-20 foot cast to these fish. Since my leader is 9 feet long and my rod is 9 feet long I'm often making this cast with only 3 or 4 feet of line out of the tip top. There ain't much to load the rod.

I can load the road by physically banging on it harder, but it is so much easier (on my body, and to lay down a fly quietly) to put a 6 weight line on the rod and use that. Am I uplined? Well, yes, by all technical definitions I am using a line over the rod rating. Am I loading the rod with the equivalent weight of 30' of 4 weight line? No, I'm probably still under a fair bit.

So am I a bad instructor for using a line over my rod weight? Am I an "old school" angler? Is two line weights radical? Am I using the wrong tool for the job? Are my casting students under priviledged because I only know how to cast a fast rod? Do I need to see a life coach over this?

I don't think the answer to any of those questions is yes. Well, I might need a life coach. If she's hot.

Again, the salient point:

The load on a rod is constantly varying. Even if you only cast one line on a rod, every millimeter of distance you change affects the cast. If you use different lines on one rod, the results will be different. There is nothing radical or incorrect about using different lines on different rods, and I would argue that in general, it's pretty hard to cast an under-loaded rod but you can pretty much add load (line weight, hand speed, fly weight, etc) to a rod to your heart's content. Eventually if you add too much weight the rod will become just as poor a performer as if you were to severely under-load it.

This stuff can seem complicated, luckily our human brain pretty much takes care of the complication by shouting "more!" or "less!" to our muscles subconsciously. That's why a person with zero experience holding a fly rod can often, with careful instruction, make beautiful, effortless and effective casts within nothing more than a few short minutes. And of course, like so many other things in life you can never really stop improving or learning about your cast.

Audience note:

The only reason I took the time to post all this is because this thread has been full of over-generalizations of the kind that lead to additional confusion for most anglers. If anyone on here wants to really learn about casting, this is not the forum to do it. While everyone's heart is in the right place, the noise-to-signal ratio concerning casting runs way too high on the noise side here.

Some *excellent* resources are:

• the book "Modern Fly Lines" by Bruce Richards
• the forums at Sexy Loops
• the forum on Dan Blanton's site

Dave,

I'm not trying to say over-lining is the mark of any sort of deficiency on the part of the angler. Rather, I am suggesting it is...to some extent...due to the trend of the mfg's to make more and more faster and faster action rods and fewer and fewer medium and slow action rods. This has a limiting effect on the tool selection of most anglers on the rod side of the equation. So we turn to the line side.

And in my original post I was paying you a compliment by saying your ability to recognize the need to over-line a modern graphite rod for short distance casting was outside the mainstream. Point in fact, this is very close to a conversation Bruce and I had back in July.

As for casting instructors, we need to keep a few things in mind:

1. The majority of folks out there teaching fly casting have no affiliation with a teaching organization or certification from an accreditation body. Most work for fly shops, volunteer through YMCA's, local clubs, etc. And many have had no formal training in casting themselves, let alone any formal training in teaching.

2. I am sort of a "if the shoe fits, wear it" sort of guy. I travel all over the country teaching seminars. I meet and observe a LOT of folks teaching casting. And I see and hear a LOT of [censored]. But I also see and hear a lot of really high quality stuff and meet a lot of truly awesome teachers. Generally speaking, the great ones are self-evident. They're the ones everyone else is constantly trying to pick apart, the ones folks seek out on their own and are willing to pay to learn from, the ones who are always willing to help...even when the cameras aren't focused on them, the ones who don't feel compelled to criticize others in public in order to try and make themselves look better, and the ones who are willing to risk pioneering new pathways, techniques, and styles in spite of the criticism and controversy that they know will come along with it.

I've noticed that there are basically 3-4 guys whom I have never met on this forum who...from my 1st post here...have seemed to have tried to read some negative meaning into everything I've posted. Or perhaps they've simply tried to twist my writing in that direction for some reason all their own. ???? Either way, they are highly mistaken. And I don't even have to take but this one detour to point it out. That's because the path I detoured from and to which I am returning speaks for itself.

.

On the subject, looks like Hook & Hackle is throwing a sale on switch rod kits
HookHack Rainshadow Kits