Local fly shop here in Reno, NV talked Kelly & I into casting Winston's new rod in the back lot two weekends ago..........All the graphite rods I've built for her and I now feel like 2x4's in comparison. The xt2, ( boron and graphite) made me feel like I was casting in slow motion....and it loaded up soooo easy, effortlessly.
The problem now is do I invest in two blanks and get to building or are there other competitors also making such ruinous rods? Saw a Powell rod last nite on a site I usually buy my boots and long johns at........"The Tiburon, Powells new boron rod"..........$800+ for the two winston blanks and components or is there something better?
Many thanks for all the whit and wisdom I've gleaned from this forum.....I finally have a real question that I'm dying for an answer. My Christmas bonus has "two more new rods" written all over it.
Merry X-mas......
Nate & Kelly

Doesn't surprise me, many years ago I met an old gentleman and rodbuilder, who taught me alot about casting at the Golden Gate Casting Club where we were both members.
He had about a half dozen 5 wt 9 ft rods that were unlabeled and many had no finish that he let his customers cast and evaluate without brand prejudices getting in the way. He said the vast majority really liked one of his favorites, the IM6 Winston. I got to admit I really liked that rod also, though I have never owned one. I was a Loomis nut back in the 80's and early 90's.
Winston still has a loyal following.

There is very little boron in that Winston rod. The reason it loaded easily was probably because you had the right line on it. Too many rods are underlabeled these days. Most any perform better if you properly line them.

Run the CCS on any blank you get and line it according to the distance you will be fishing. That has really turned some of my rods from dogs into jewels!!

After I posted this I searched "boron" and Stephen Pratt of CTS said almost verbatim what you spoke......After years of fishing, tying, and in the past few years building my own rods, I'm realizing now how much more I want to know and understand about the design. IE. what is CCS Ed? Jeez, just when I thought I knew everything. Thanks.

If you look at the available ERN data for Winston on the CCS data site you can see that that they tend to designate the line weights on their rods a bit over the power actually available. This means that it doesn't take much line to load them and cast comfortably. G Loomis tends to better match power with line weight giving them a rod that loads well with the stated line designation while some other manufacturers designate their rods lighter than the available power and need to be over lined to load well. Finding a rod with an action you prefer and a line that loads it properly for your normal casting distance is the secret to satisfaction and more important than the minor addition of any other material to the graphite that composes the basic blank in my experience. I agree with Ed wholeheartedly.

Stan Grace
Helena, MT
"Our best is none too good"

Thanks Stan....I found Hannemans site on CCS.

I came so close to making the first response to this string, but held back because I didn't want to start an argument, but since others seem to agree here goes. I would really like to know how much Boron is in that Rod. Most experts seem to agree that not only is Boron, EXTREMELY cost prohibitive, it is not readily available like Carbon is, and in addition is quite difficult to work with. I have had numerous conversations with Stephen Pratt of CTS, Sharon Johnson at AllStar, Dick Kantner of GUSA etc...about the use of not just Boron, but often very high modulus graphite in rods, and they all agree, much of it is bogus marketing. Sure, there is probably some Boron in there, but where and how much? I mean if they are putting a 1" long strip in the butt section ( or even a 1' long strip) that will be covered up by the handle, who cares? It's sort of like the multi-modulus debate that has been going on here for the past few weeks....put a 2" wide strip of 57 mil. in the butt of a 1st generation layup, and boom...you can call it a high modulus blank...it @#$%& but it happens, and I bet more than we would like to think.
I Agree with Ed, the amount of Boron in that rod is probably not enough, or in the right places to have any effect on the actual performance of the rod. Not that it's a bad rod...I understand they are quite good rods, but it ain't because of the boron.

Wouldn't it be interesting if all manufacturers came clean (like CTS did a few weeks ago) about the type, amount and position of the fiber types in their layups?
I bet we'd all be left with jaws on the floor in many cases ( and not because we were pleasantly surprised)


Andy Dear
Lamar
www.lamarreelseats.com

Andy Dear....was looking at your sight a bit ago after reading an older chat in here w/ Stephen Pratt. Maybe I should clarify what impressed me w/ this rod........I assumed it must be the boron and "spaceage technology"...........I'm thinking along different lines now.
What really floored me was how much less effort it "seemed" to take to cast 40 - 60 ft of line compared to any other rod I've casted. Yes, it was all in the "action" .....like the earlier post I was a little impatient casting it at first.......I don't know.....I know now I've got a lot more research I want to do now. I can imagine picking up one of cts's rods and forgetting about the winston after what I've just read about them tonite. @#$!*& I can still feel how easy that first cast was!

I've been selling fly rods a long, long time. In all that time I ran across very few "bad" rods, although some were better than others. Invaribly, the people who could not cast their rods well were the same ones who just didn't have the right line on their rod for the general distances they were going to be fishing. They blamed the actions, the manufacturer, the materials, etc., but when we shifted line weights most then began to enjoy the same rod that they had come in complaining about to begin with.

It's been my experience, that most of the rods that have developed a bit of a "cult" following, such as Burkheimer, Diamondback, Winston, Steffen Brothers, Austin, etc., are all rated for lines that cast easily and fully with about 30 to 35 feet of that line past the tip. In general, this is a good average distance for most fly fishermen and I think the sensible ratings are what makes people like the rods so much. Not that they're better than other rods, just that they work well with the rated lines at the distances most real world fishermen fish at. No, they don't win the casting competitions in the magazines, but they get the job done for the guys who are actually fishing in the most common situations.

I've also found, that very few fly fishermen understand what that number listed on their fly line box means. Very few understand the relationship between line weight number and length of line. Want to really impress a fly fishing club meeting with your custom rods? Go to one of their meetings and explain what those numbers mean. You'll have the most attentive audience that you can ever imagine and many guys will thank you afterwards.

..........

Andy,

You should bring a CTS rod to Charlotte and let guys cast it in the casting area. That would open up a few eyes!

Mike

Hey Mike, that's already happening. I'll have my personal 6wt Affinity Saltwater as well as an Affinty 5wt and 6wt Freshwater series.

Tom makes a tremendous point...and since he mentioned Burkheimer and Austin, I have to chime in being distributors for both. When I first signed on with Kerry (Burkheimer) as a distributor, the first thing he told me was this:

"Andy, you tell your clients that this rod was designed to fish at fishing distances...20-60 feet, not be cast 110 feet in the parking lot of a flyshop. They'll be very diappointed in these blanks if they test them in a parking lot. To truly appreciate a Burkheimer blank you have to fish it"


Andy

It seems nearly everyone who mentions his favorite rod or blank gives complete details about the rod, but nothing about the line: not line weight, line style (DT, WF, triangle taper, extreme weight forward, shooting head), floater, intermediate, sink tip, full sinker, dacron core, braided mono core, solid mono core, or manufacturer. Of course this is a rod building site, but it seems misleading to give all the credit to the rod for flycasting. I read that Lee Wulff could cast sixty feet with no rod at all, just his arm and hand. I'll bet he gave some credit to the fly line.

With that having been said, I've never really run into a bad fly line. I've often been amazed at how well a level #6, $9 line from WalMart will actually cast. I have no idea how long it'll last or how high it'll float, but they cast just fine.

..........

I may be preaching to the choir here, but as an interesting side note to those who don't know, Boron fibers are manufactured completely different from carbon. Boron fibers are made by using a complex vapor deposition process whereby Boron is deposited on to a very fine tungsten wire to form the "fiber". I am sure that someone with more experience should be able to elaborate on the deatils of this process.
I understand Boron fibers are quite large in diameter and heavy compared to carbon, but are super stiff, so it doesn't take much of it to do the job.
Jimmy Green used to talk about how when Fenwick was using Boron that the workers had to wear special gloves because the fibers were so stiff that they would penetrate very deep into the skin...but they were very small, and hard to see to get back out!


Andy

Sounds like fiberglass ?? Have had a lot of splinters from that stuff. Can not find it .

Like the saying in the preveous post about ' you have to fist the rod " not cast in the parking lot.
I liked a factory St Croix 9' 5 wt SCIV only when I over lined it.

I also feel that when I am fishing I do not want to ' baby sit " my rod, only because I would be afread to hit a rock if I layed it down and then possibly broke it later because of this.
A nicely priced IM 7 has the durability I look for. Those 3-400 dollar blanks I think are just hype.

Not all but most. Plus are to highly priced.