My brother wants a fly rod that casts and feels like my rod built with an Allstar Austin BAF904-4 blank. I noticed on the SuperBob site that there is a Dan Craft blank that mirrors the Austin’s ERN and AA:

Allstar Austin
BAF904-4
ERN: 5.05
AA: 66

Dan Craft
Five Rivers FTL 905-6
ERN: 5.05
AA: 66

If I built a fly rod using the above FTL blank using similar components as my Austin rod, would the two cast and feel similar?

Thanks much in advance for any insight.

Maybe and maybe not. They would certainly share the same action and power, that's not in doubt. However, how does the weight of the blanks compare? That's a very important piece of the puzzle as well. If the weight of one blank is more than the other, then even with the exact same action and power it's not going to react nor recover at the same rate as the lighter one. This means that one will certainly "feel" different than the other and may even cast a bit differently.

The CCF (Common Cents Frequency) numbers would certainly help you peg this even closer, if you can get those figures.

The more inherent properties that match (length, action, power, weight, frequency, etc.) the closer the two will be to providing the same exact casting performance and "feel."

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In my experience with these two blanks I would expect them to be a fairly close match in performance irregardless of the greater number of sections in the FTL.

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