OK - this was sparked by the post I just read on resonant frequency, and Tom's reply. When I build walleye rods, I can get a 6'or 6'6" to balance perfectly, so you feel no tip weight at all, without adding weight to the butt. Jump to 7' or longer, and it gets hard to achieve that "weightless" feeling, without adding slight counter weight.

Would this not tell us that the most sensitive rods would be those that balace well without added counter weight, and thus have the over-all lightest weight - which would be shorter rods!

Any thoughts?

In general, if most everything else is fairly equal, longer rods are going to be more sensitive. By giving the fish a longer lever he will move farther, fight harder and it will require more effort on your part to arrest his movements. You can easily prove this to yourself by carrying two rods with similar action and power, but with vastly different lengths, and giving them a go on a day when you're into the fish and catching many of the same general size. On the longer rods, the fish will seem to hit harder and feel larger. You'll be relying on subjective feel, but the difference is so marked I'm confident you'll agree. Unless the difference in weight is truly large, the longer lever will trump it most every time.

The only problem with this is that sensitivity is dependent on so many things, rod length being just one of them. You gain a little here, lose a little there, etc., etc., etc.

Most fishermen are willing to adjust some things to gain more sensivity but in other areas they are not. For instance, a stiffer rod should be more sensitive, But rod stiffness or power is something that most fishermen chose based on what they need the rod to do, the size fish they need to fight or the weight of the lures they need to cast, not how sensitive they want it to be. On the other hand, many fishermen are willing to move to high modulus rods and less weight if that might give them an edge in sensitivity. Would you be willing to move to a longer rod in order to gain more sensitivity? Some will and some won't - it depends on how that additional length factors into the technique they're using or what they need the rod to do.



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And, just to clear things up even further...

How sensitive does a rod actually 'need' to be?

As 'sensitive' as possible? I disagree.

Is it likely that we are now way past the human nervous systems ability to actually process the difference in 'vibrations' that todays blanks can transfer?

I had no troubles feeling light strikes on plastic baits 40 years ago when rods were mostly fiberglass and lines stretched like ruber bands.

Todays rods and lines are so much better that I believe we have reached the point where the difference between individual anglers to actually 'feel' it is far greater than the difference in sensitivity of modern graphite rods.

If an angler today is having trouble feeling his strikes, I doubt seriously that ANY rod can rectify the problem. Some guys are just ham handed.

Just another viewpoint.

Buddy

A longer rod will result in higher sensitivity ONLY if the additional length does not result in higher weight but unfortunately more length will, all other things being equal, result in more weight. The same thing is true for increased stiffness. All other things being equal, higher stiffness will result in higher weigh.
Also adding weight to achieve better balance will not result in higher sensitivity. In fact, it will result in reduced sensitivity.
In each case the trade off between increased length, increased stiffness, balance, and sensitivity get complicated but generally as just a rule of thumb increased weight will reduce sensitivity more than increased stiffness or increased length or better balance will increase sensitivity.

Buddy, I really believe strongly in what you've said; remembering Roberto Duran, I call it "hands of stone". Some people just cannot feel a light bite with the best of rods and they sure can't tell the difference between a poorer rod and a good one (just talking sensitivity).

Putter
Williston, ND

Hey Buddy - I really agree with everything you said. A rod only needs to be sensitive enough to feel a fish. I doubt that tiny differences in sensitivity actually would make a difference in feeling or not feeling a hit. Just like the one piece vs. two pc. debate - could you ever actually feel a hit with a one piece rod that you wouldn't with a good two piece - no way.

You nailed it, Buddy!!!!!

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

A longer rod is more sensitive - this is the one experiment that all fishermen need to try for themselves. The difference is so marked that it is easily felt by the naked hand. I have some tests coming up in a future RodMaker that will illustrate this, but you can pretty much convince yourself by just using different lengths and seeing how the same size fish feel and act on the different rods. It's no contest.

A stiffer rod is not necessarily going to be a heavier rod - depends on the materials and design involved. I have some UL rods that are heavier than some of my much more powerful rods. But it's only because of the difference in what they're made from and the diameter of the blanks involved. But I'd never chose a heavier rod to gain sensitivity. Like most fishermen I think I chose rod power based on what I'm going to be doing with the rod and how much power is required to do it.

How sensitive does a rod need to be? I don't know. Most of the strikes I detect are never really felt as much as they're seen by the movement of the line in the water. But from a sales perspective or even from the standpoint of personal confidence, most fishermen would like to think that their rod is every bit as sensitive as it can possibly be. There are a lot of sensitivity gimmicks used to sell fishermen on sensitivity, but the only one that I ever felt confident in "selling" were related to having a rod that was as light as it could possibly be for length involved.

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Buddy;
I tend to disagree. Being a plumbing contractor my hands are usually calloused from work.
Meaning I have more dead skin to feel through then say an office guy that handles pens and paper all day. Therefore I always build my rods to be the most sensitive that I possible can based on my abilities to do so.

I have yet to feel or find a rod that I consider too sensitive.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/2007 08:12AM by Steve Gardner.

Marc- Tom would be right about the longer rods if all things were equal, but they are not equal. Remember- stiffness is inversely proportional to length SQUARED. So a little increase in length results in a significant decrease in stiffness. To maintain the stiffness a significant amount of added material (and therefore mass) will have to be added. This is why your longer rods begin to feel tip-heavy.

In practice, longer rods must have more mass, a steeper taper, or a stiffer fiber to achieve the same stiffness as a shorter rod. A blank designer could increase the modulus or the diameter of the longer rod to make it stiffer. But then, as I said, all things are no longer equal.

Given this, in practice you will find that a shorter rod is going to feel more sensitive because it will be lighter and it will be stiffer than a similar rod that is longer.

And don't confuse how hard a fish can pull during a fight with how sensitive a rod is. A twelve foot long rod would make any fish feel big, but I can promise you that this would not be a sensitive rod.

let me just through this out, it is something rarely mentioned, from some observations it is evident that reaction time plays a big part it is not that a person doesn't feel a hit but that their reactions are slower and because they may miss the fish it becomes the rod isn't sensitive enough
John

When I look at the specifications of the various blank manufactures, it seems like the higher end blanks take a smaller tip top like a 4/64 - 4.5/64 verses the less expensive blanks that take a 5/64 - 5.5/64 tip top size. Would this smaller tip section indicates a more sensitive rod of the same length and power and built with the same components than one with a larger tip section? Or is this more associated with the action - fast, moderate, etc.? Thanks.

A longer rod magnifies the fight of the same sized fish. I think longer rods are more "sensitive" because it's what I feel that I call sensitivity. Even a much heavier rod if it's long will be more sensitive for me.

Ken,

I won't argue with you on the effect that length has on the amount of force that it allows the fish to apply against the fisherman. I think we're in tune on that aspect of the sensitivity puzzle and you can certainly "feel" the fish's movements better. But I might still argue with you about weight but only because it affects this sensitivity issue in a different manner.

That's the problem - everything that everybody has said here is correct. That's because everybody here is talking about something different when they talk about sensitivity. For some it's about how hard the fish can pull against the angler. For others it's about the ability of the rod to transmit some type of vibration down to the hand. Still others feel it's something altogether different than either of these.

I once had some flounder fishermen ask me for long glass rods because they were "so much more sensitive than graphite rods." Their definition of sensitivity was how easily they could notice the tip flex over and bounce around. They weren't concerned with what they could feel, only what they could see.

The only thing I've ever been able to settle on when trying to make a rod more "sensitive' is simply to make it as light as I can within the confines of what I have to have on it in order for it to do the job it's intended for.

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Excellent point about the vernacular Tom. I think this is often the root of confusion when discussing rods between builders (and especially between builders and anglers). Anyone trying to communicate this sort of thing needs to take great pains to make sure they are clear on how they define these terms.

When Emory and I were e-mailing each other about these issues months ago, I know we sometimes argued in circles before realizing we were sometimes in complete agreement.

Switching to spectra will add more tactile sensitivity than manipulating the composition or construction of the rod. Beyond that lies the handline.

Phil,
You are right on target. The line has a dramatic affect on sensitivity. In fact, in most cases it will have more affect than anything that is done to the rod.
How well vibrations will travel up a line is primarily a function of the mass density of the line, which you can think of as the weight, and the elasticity of the line, which you can think of as the amount of stretch, and the tension on the line.
Braids tend to be much lighter for a given strength and also have much less stretch for a given strength than monofilament so they result in dramatically higher sensitivity then monofilament.

Tom,

I agree on the whole light as possible thing.

Also on longer rods being able to 'feel' the fish better.

When I talk about sensitivity, it's about 'detecting' those 'light' strikes (that's all that really matters to me, I want to know when I've been bit-the rest is academic). Feeling the fish pull only happens after you've hooked it.....the times when the fish 'pulling' is the first instance of my awareness of it's presense are rare (nice, but not hard to 'feel').

I'm pretty convinced that we are now at the point where what the angler had for breakfast is about as important as the difference between rods.

Combine a low stretch line with a reasonably built graphite rod, and we can be pretty sure that lack of 'feel' is on the angler.

That being said, it's a challenge that we can't ignore to try to build the best rod possible. Lighter, more sensitive, stronger. It does and should matter to US, but I'm just at the point where I doubt seriously that it matters on the water.

It is, after all, just a fishing rod.

I'm still looking to build the 'perfect' fly rod= 9', 6 wt., <1 oz total, and unbreakable.

Buddy Sanders

Other than a few very few species, most fish "bites" are only the fish stopping the movement of the lure. They don't chew on the lure nor grab it and start shaking and quivering. This is why I don't think most fishermens' idea of vibration transmission via a strike is really what they think it is.

I know that you can get yourself down into a swimming pool and have an angler above you, blindfolded, retreive a bait through the water. You can slap it, knock it, beat it, and he'll never feel it. But just stop it for an instant and he'll know it.

Can you feel this subtle "stop" better with a lighter rod? I think so. The mechanics involved would also point to this being true. Same with a longer rod, the "stop" will exert more force on you.

Beyond that, what about the feeling of a spinnerbait's blade in the water? Certainly most anglers agree that a lighter rod vibrates more noticeably in this instance than a heavier rod does. But is this the same thing as a fish bite? I know that sometimes what you're looking for is any interruption or change in the vibration of your lure. No doubt that introducing a line such as Spectra improves this aspect by a tremendous degree over say, monofiliment.

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Buddy I'm with you. My criteria for sensitivity is bite (or "stop") detection, especially for finese techniques (not much need for bite detection if you're throwing buzz baits). I also agree that with very rare exceptions graphite rods have sufficient bite detectiom potential and super lines help significantly. I do have one additional perspective and that is if the angler really wants to improve strike detection - fish more. My personal experience is that my rods have way more sensitivity than is sufficient but interpretting the "feel", specifically the change in feel, is my challenge. I think fishing a rod a lot and using the old nymph fishing adage of find a reason to set the hook on every cast is beneficial for me. Fishing a rod a lot and developing the extra sense that something has just changed in the feel of the retrieve increases my hookups more than searching for a rod with the perfect quantified sensitivity. Many experienced anglers say the change in feel is often unexplainable. I'm not sure that hand composition has as much to do with it as either lots of practice that trains the brain or maybe some anglers are better wired with this extra sense. Sometimes I'm not even aware of why I set the hook and a fish is on. I guess I'm saying fishing a rod a lot and with confidence makes me more sensitive to the rods sensitivity.