Sage TCR
- This topic has 7 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated Mar 8, 2006 at 3:03 am by
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I’ll probably go to Laramie in late June or early July Trailready. Thanks for showing me all the cool Cloudveil stuff at the Shop. Simms better watch out. The only TCR rod I’ve tried is the 5 weight and for the money I’d have to live in Wyoming to buy one. I see new rods on ebay every now and then and you might pick one up for 60% of list, I might buy one then. I have 2 Scott S3 rods that I am fishing now a 4 and 6 weight
That v-loop or airfoil loop is probably a result of a change in your stroke, not the rod itself.
My best distance cast ever is a 116′ cast with a St. Croix Pro Graphite and a 6 weight SA XXD floating line. I’ve thrown a lot longer casts but never any that were this good relative to the weight of the rod. My point is the fastest, most expensive rod is only a tool and a tool is only as good as its user. The TCR will give you a slight performance boost, but the fundamentals of the long cast are still the same.
I am pretty sure the airfoil loop is created naturally when the rod turns over in straight line path. There is a bit of a two-step hinge to the human wrist as it goes from bent to straight to slightly over bent, but you will only see this effect on a cast with all extraneous power wastage (ie loops out of plane) taken out of the cast. The easiest way to create the airfoil is to use a very long rod. For some reason this almost always forces it to occur. On a smaller rod, focus on tip tracking and making sure the loops turn over “over their own shadow.”
I was able to attain considerable distance with an outright sidearmed backcast but after a lot of study and closely watching Lefty Kreh, who my stroke most resembles, I realized that Lefty bends his wrist in the backcast almost ninety degrees *toward his body*. Thus, his hand is actually tracking exactly like it would if it were coming straight over his shoulder – the rod doesn’t rotate out of true, it simply moves back and forth out to the side instead of over his shoulder.
I experimented a little and found that I could throw in what amounts to a “j-stroke” at the end of my backcast. Basically as the rod is unloading in the backcast I very slightly, almost imperceptibly jerk the butt of the rod forward, thus pulling the rod straight just a hair faster. I then realized I could aim the backcast better with this technique. Today I will throw line very high in the backcast in order to let a lot of it unroll before beginning the forward cast. Contrary to popular belief you do not want the backcast to be unrolling as you start the forward cast – rather you want it completely unrolled and still tugging on the rod with a bare minimum of momentum. That will line up the backcast with the trajectory of the forward cast and put the maximum amount of grains of line in play to help load the rod.
HTH,
ZachZach thanks for the info. I’ll try to put it to use. Are there any certified instructors up in Ktown or Nashville. It would be interesting to get a few pointers from a pro. I talked to Lefty a couple of times at shows, what a great guy. I downloaded a couple of clips from arkansasflyfishing.com of some tournament casters interesting to see the rod speed and the timing of the hauls etc. I think my problem is use some wrist which lefty said was taboo, some others have said a little acceleration of the wrist adds distance and helps create the air foil loop that I want to achieve.
Thanks,
DMK
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