I am building a flyrod from a blank I have had sitting around for a few years. It is an original Loomis IMX, 9 foot, 11/12 weight mega. I thought I might use it for tarpon or maybe king salmon in one of our large Alaskan rivers. I have built many fly rods over the years but all lighter weight. I looked in Dale Clemons book and he discusses the pros and cons of putting the guides on the high or low side of the spine for a heavy flyrod such as this. without having the book in front of me at the moment, one way allows better casting but the other way allows better lifting of heavy fish. What are the latest thoughts on this?

Neither. Dale was offbase on this. If you need more casting power then you need to move to a 12/13 weight blank. If you need more power for fish lifting you also need a more powerful blank.

Two problems with Dale's opinion. What builders refer to as the hard and soft sides are not 180 degrees apart. So the high and low side as you call them are not opposite each other. They might be fairly close sometimes but hardly ever perfectly opposite. Also the exact difference in power will be so slight that flipping the blank one way or the other to try and gain more power or casting performance just isn't going to add up to a hill of beans. If you rate the blank for stiffest and softest axis on the CCS scale you won't find more than a .2 difference. It's just not worth worrying about.

I can tell you how I would do a blank that heavy and I know it works. Sight down the blank and find the natural curve. Put the guides along the belly of the blank and let it go at that. You'll love it.

Mike, I'm a hobby builder, and have four or five rods under my belt. I'm going to be building a 12 wt. soon, and I read with interest your thoughts on spines. Would you mind expanding a little bit your comments on (a) the natural curve of the blank and (b) the belly of the blank? What I read (a) to mean is that a blank will have some existing curvature, due to manufacturing processes, ie., it won't be perfectly straight. What I read (b) to mean is that the "inside" of that curve is the belly you're referring to. Am I reading these correctly? I appreciate any insight you can offer.

Regards,

John Boatwright

Mike, thanks for the input!