Zach Matthews
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On behalf of my most important sponsor, I thank you for your support, Carter.
Knew I could count on you.
“Zima”
No man is ever old enough to smoke a pipe, yet I have one and I will certainly indulge on a cold day on the water.
Hey Joel –
I appreciate your understanding. You know I value your opinion and I know you are not one to fly off the handle. The deal with this site is, I don’t censor people’s opinions, but I do ask them to think the opinions through. When people have come out and been overly critical about a company in the past, rather than delete their post, I have simply tried to point out why I think their criticism is unfair. Take Lando, for instance (not picking on you Lando–just as an example): his waders leak. Well, everyone’s waders leak eventually. Sometimes it’s due to a manufacturing failure and sometimes it’s due to wear and tear. Generally speaking, cheaper waders are going to leak faster – you don’t push a Ford Taurus to 130mph and then expect it to perform like a Porsche. But, in the case of both Cloudveil and Orvis, I am sure that if Lando sent the waders back and the company looked at them and realized they were designed or manufactured to fail, I feel confident they would man up and make it right.
I don’t ask people to treat my advertisers with kid gloves; I do ask people to treat everyone and every company with a reasonable degree of respect, whether they are my advertiser or not. Not an excessive amount of respect, just some.
Zach
Joel –
I understand where you’re coming from, but this is old news. (And when I said that, I meant I accepted their sponsorship of this site, on behalf of the site.) When I started accepting ads on this site, I made it clear to all my advertisers that they weren’t buying interest and that it wouldn’t affect my writing (which is, after all, for magazines which have their own priorities – I am just a freelancer). Over time the companies that advertise here have decided it’s a good investment because this site simply has a lot of fly fishers who view it. The door is open for any advertiser who wants to buy an ad, and it doesn’t get them anything anywhere else – that’s how it’s been for over two years.
Mike –
Thanks man, but actually, I think my understanding is still relatively sketchy compared to what it hopefully will be in the next few months.
Spencer –
Consider what a DT is and what the application would be. A true double taper line simply tapers from the point to the “head”, which then extends all the way to the other end of the line, where it tapers back to an identical point.
Weight forward lines share characteristics of DT lines for their first 30 feet; once again we have a pointed tip that tapers up to the “head,” which is thicker. The distinction occurs on the *back* side of the head, where in a weight forward, of course, the line tapers back to a point (the running line), and it then continues in that finer diameter for many yards all the way to the end of the line.
The DT has the advantage of being able to be flipped around to be reused, but manufacturers report that very, very few people actually do this.
Why was the DT created in the first place? Because old silk lines relied on oil to repel water, and after about a half day of fishing, the angler would have to turn his line around to fish the dry end. In those days, anglers carried large spools for winding off the line and then flipping it to rewind onto the reel.
Here’s the crux of the matter: if you never fish past the length of the head of a WF line, then there’s little difference between a WF and a DT. For simpler WF tapers, there’s *no* difference, because the transition between head and tip is a smooth, straight line. For more complex WF tapers (like Rio’s Nymph or SA’s XPS, for example), there may be “steps” in between the head and the tip, which affect how hard the line will turn over. Think of a bullet being necked down from its cartridge size to the ultimate bullet diameter; some bullets have a smooth transition, while others “neck down” in a variety of steps of different lengths. Lines are the same way, only stretched out.
When I say the DT is the “absolute worst performing line,” you have to consider the application. Inside 20 feet, there’s little to no difference between a DT and a simple WF. That’s your baseline; the worst a line can perform might be perfectly adequate for 90% of your fishing conditions. If you move up to a complex tapered WF, like the Nymph, you may get some kind of performance advantage (and in fact, the Nymph taper will turn the tip over harder-for bigger bugs-even inside 20 feet, because of its complex “neck down” design).
Now consider what happens if you try to lengthen your casts. Here a DT becomes a liability; because there is no running line, you have no opportunity to develop a “shooting head” style cast. Releasing a DT with 40′ of line out causes the “head” to drag through the guides all the way to the other end, creating considerable drag and wind resistance. No distance caster would ever choose a DT (unless he intended to carry the *entire* head and use the *whole line* as an elaborate shooting head, which I have actually done with a 15′ 10 weight two handed rod).
So, please don’t think I am criticizing your choice of a DT; for short distance fishing conditions like those you probably see in the Midwest, you’re giving up only the marginal advantage of a complex line’s more sophisticated taper. (And you may save enough money to make this well worth the trade). A qualified angler should certainly be able to get the job done with a DT or with any line; it’s just that he is choosing to play with a base model rather than with any upgrades.
Zach
This is a potentially enormous subject, as you can tell. It’s also one with a lot of history. Probably the most innovative guys at exploring fly line weighting and tapering are over in the spey set. I’d say Jim Vincent, who founded Rio Products, is the acknowledged guru at this. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, before commercially available spey lines were being produced, Vincent and his cohort of spey buddies started splicing together big chunks of different pieces of fly line, inventing their own tapers in a time period when most anglers still used double-taper lines (the absolute worst performing lines because they are the most generic).
They would cut off a length of fly line, strip the coating from one end, then run the core up into the coating of the other piece and glue them. I’ve never totally understood how, but they were able to make lines strong enough to fight salmon with that were literally glued together inside the cores.
From those experiments developed lines like the Rio Windcutter, and arguably the whole basis of complex fly line tapering came out of that set (others were also experimenting, but few with such an elaborate series of steps, etc.)
Back when manufacturers were seeking a standard way to name fly lines (the “weight” system as opposed to an older alphanumeric scheme), they hit upon measuring the first thirty feet of line and then labeling certain grain windows as this or that weight. Thus, lines whose first thirty feet were between about 135-145 grains were labeled “5 weights.”
When every line on the market is a DT or a simple weight forward, that system made sense. It became a de facto rod classification system as well, because the rods meant to cast a 135-145 grain line could now be called “five weight” rods to match the five weight lines.
But when anglers (like Jim Vincent) opened the Pandora’s box of new tapers, that system ceased to make as much sense. If a line is meant to cast best at distances of 60-80′, it makes little difference what the first thirty feet of the line weighs, because the angler is most likely going to be carrying 45′ or so out of the tip top, and he’s going to want a thin running line behind it to let the head shoot better. Consequently, distance taper lines (just to take an example) are often WAY out of their rated line classifications when measured on a grain scale under the AFFTA system.
Manufacturers take this into account in labeling their lines, doing the math in advance for you. A 5 weight distance line is meant for a 5 weight rod, but keep in mind that it would only be “meant for” that rod if your goals were the same as the manufacturers’ assumptions.
Distance lines tend to use the principle that the further the rod bends and the greater load it is under, the faster the head will fly and thus the longer the cast will go. So, most distance lines are overweight for their rated size. Is this wrong? No; on the contrary, as long as you want to do what the manufacturers think you want to do, it should be just right.
Unfortunately, manufacturers of rods and reels have allowed themselves to get into a bit of an arms race. Anglers demand longer casts but don’t want to work on improving their mechanics. So manufacturers of rods develop stiffer rods which will throw line at higher speeds with a given line weight. Anglers then realize that the rod doesn’t bend much in close (since there’s not enough of the line out the tip to bend the stiffer rod), so they turn to the line companies and expect a fix. The line companies oblige by making their lines a “half size” heavier, or exceeding the grain window for the rating of the line. Rod manufacturers then turn around and start all over, making an even stiffer rod. By any objective measurement, Sage’s TCR 5 weight really acted like more of a 7 weight, to take an example of a pretty egregious standards-breaker.
What does this mean for you? It means your rods have a lot wider range of capabilities than you may realize. Line ratings are based on assumptions about how you will fish that may not be true. I frequently overline my rods by two or three line ratings, especially for throwing shooting heads. I want the rod to bend as deeply as possible in order to throw a long way with a minimal amount of effort on my part. Conversely, I never underline my rods, because in my opinion most graphite rods have gotten too stiff for ordinary fishing conditions anyway, and certainly don’t need any help by having less weight pulling on them. My Scott G2 is a very medium-actioned rod, which is why I fish it so often.
The point of all this is to give you an idea of just how much subjectivity is involved here. Manufacturer’s ratings are always a good starting point, but they should not be considered the end-all be-all when lining your rod.
Zach
Guys –
I had a sick dog to take care of yesterday, necessitating the use of the carpet scrubber at 3:30AM, 5:30PM and 6:00PM, not to mention the partial disassembly of my living room. Apparently feeding the dog leftover pork ribs was a bad idea. 🙂
Anyway, barring unforeseen repeats, I hope to have a new podcast up tonight (as well as a couple new sponsors to announce when I get their ads hosted).
Zach
David –
Hardy has slashed its reel prices for 2009 by approximately 40-50% on every reel in the lineup except the Perfect, based on being made in Korea rather than England.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5197025.ece
That article explains the meme and its viral effects on the internet.