Hi all

My question is, even though I followed the spine vs. guide placing on a blank comments (where the spine position is not that important), the picture of lifting up heavy weight tarpon "tells" me that the stiffer spine should be facing this tremendous flection.
Is my thought right or wrong ??

Thanks

I'd say wrong. The softest and stiffest axii, are not 180 degrees apart so this wouldn't be a matter of putting the spine up or down - it would be a matter of putting it off to the side somewhere. Nor is there much difference between them in terms of stiffness - about .2 on the ERN scale. If you need more power, buy a more powerful blank.

Now having said that, I think you'll find that if you position the rod so that the guides are along the straightest axis, you'll have them on the belly of the concave bend and the stiffest axis will, in fact, be in use against a fish just as you suggest. But even if that weren't the case no harm would come to your rod. The guides being on the bottom of the rod will hold the rod stable under load.

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Thank you very much Tom
I have to think and picture in a different way.

Willy,

Your fly rod even a 12 wt is still compared to a medium salt water spinning rod quite a pussy cat when it come to the power stakes. No way you can use that flimsy fly rod as a crane on big Tarpon. It does not matter where that spine is It is going to have no impact on Mr Tarpon at all. Big powerful fish are not played the same way as say even a big Striper. The rod can be used to deliver low blows as in the down and dirty Billy Pate manuvre when the fish is no longer fresh and you are putting the hurt on the fish. Until then it's the drag on your reel that does all the work. Bend you fly rod in the high stick position to a fresh Trpon and a vendor on this site is going to be selling you a brand new blank and fittings. LOL

Mike O.

I agree with Mike. Compare a fly rod -- even a heavyweight like a 12-wt -- to, say, an inshore conventional rod. The conventional rod is like a pool cue in comparison. Regardless of where you put the spine, you're not going to lift a tarpon with a fly rod. And since you're not going to lift it, you might as well put the guides in the position where they're least likely to cause rod twist -- which is normally opposite the spine.

I first noticed the difference in power between fly and conventional/spinning blanks in the surf, targeting stripers and bluefish. Even a lightweight surf spinning outfit -- like the kind I use to fish for flounder and northern kingfish in the summer -- is a good bit sturdier than my 10-wt fly rod. It's just a different ballgame. Not better, or worse -- just different.

to all,
i am building a 14' two piece lite to medium two piece surf rod that i will use a jigmaster reel with. now my question is that i sort of found the spine of the bottom half of the rod but i don't think that it is very accurate in that i hope the rod doesn't twist when i fight a 10lb. or heavier fish. does the spine of the top and bottom half have to be aligned?
thanks jason

Jason -- it depends on the strength rating of the blank, and how much the lower half bends.

When building two-piece rods, I identify the spine on both on the top and bottom, and try to align the two when putting the rod together. I've even wrapped masking tape on each, where they meet, with marks to make it easier to line them up. But if you finished the bottom without checking for spine, I don't think you have a whole lot to worry about -- almost all the blanks I've ever dealt with have a tendency to bend, under stress, almost entirely in the top section. A few of my heavier-weight surf rods actually have bottom sections that do not bend at all -- they're like broom sticks. I've noticed that the lighter the rod, the more the bottom half bends -- it's especially pronounced in fly rod blanks -- but that most surf blanks bend very little in the bottom piece.

If you understand rod spine, there's no reason not to check both the top and bottom section of a 2-piece rod, and align them properly. It only takes a few seconds, and will only improve the finished rod's action. But if you finished the bottom without checking the blank, you're probably fine, especially with a 14-foot blank.

Here's what I'd do in your shoes: put the reel, spooled with the type of line you plan on using, on the rod, and run the line through the guides. Have a friend hold the rod, and put a good bend into the blank, and see where the rod stops bending. It's probably somewhere in the top piece; if so, then I wouldn't worry about the spine in bottom piece (I'm assuming that you located the spine correctly on the top piece, and installed guides properly). Even if there is a small amount of bend in the bottom piece, I still don't think that you're going to have a problem. Again, there's no reason not to match the spines of the two pieces, but since probably around 98% of a surf blank's action is going to be in the top piece, if the bottom piece is not spined correctly, it is not going to affect rod performance in any noticeable way.

This is just my opinion, of course, and I welcome anyone who disagrees...

The spine has no effect on rod twist. Zip, Zero, Zilch. Fish don't jump out of the water and deflect your rod with a fin. They load the rod through a line passing through guides wrapped to the rod. All rods with guides on top will twist. Rods with guides on the bottom will not twist.

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