So I think I'll open up a can of'em....

In the recent debate about sensitivity several good points were made; but didn't really answer any questions. So I'm sitting here thinking about hearing! Yeah, hearing. There are certain frequencies the human ear simply can not detect. Soooo..... Transfer that concept to the sense of - feel? After reading many post on this subject via the search feature I still don't know the answer to: Is a vibration in a line measured by frequency. If not what exactly is it measured by? Obviously it's measured by some method and means which brings me around to the real question - in a round about way. I've been told that some animals, such as dogs, can detect an object approaching, such as a train, from feeling vibrations in the ground that man can not feel. Don't have a clue to if this is true or not. But... In our quest for sensitivity are we approaching or have we passed the point in blank construction that for all practical purposes - sensitivity is no longer an issue? A blank 10x more sensitive than anything that exist today... doesn't matter - we can't feel it anyhow? Notice the question mark - I was not making a statement.

Now having posed that question and without knowing the answer. I'm assuming the answer is yes vibration/sensitivity is measured by frequency and I suppose amplitude of said frequency. If there is a frequency man simply can not detect by feel would it be possible to construct a rod blank such that the incoming signal is converted into a frequency that is detectable by man? This and a whole slew of other things fit neatly in the drawr containing things I do not know!

Doug,
The energy from the fish's bite that comes up the line has both frequency and amplitude just as you suggested. And whether we sense it or not is also a function of both the frequency and the amplitude. The range of frequencies that we can feel is much narrower than what we can hear but the frequencies that we can feel extends down to much lower frequencies than we can hear. At high amplitudes the ears of young people are capable of hearing a range of frequencies from about 20 hertz or cycles per second to about 20 thousand Hertz. As you get older this range becomes narrower and narrower particularly with the higher frequencies. As the amplitude gets lower the range of frequencies also gets less. Feeling on the other hand extends all of the way down to DC or zero frequency. Feeling like hearing is also a function of amplitude.
But I think that you guessed all of this.
A fish's bite occurs at a very low frequency, all of the way down to DC or zero frequency, and below our ability to hear. That is why you never hear the line vibrating or the rod vibrating as the result of a fish's bite.
I do not believe that rods or blanks have progressed to the point that sensitivity is no longer an important issue. However, I do think that they are much better now than in the past in this respect.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2010 08:02PM by Emory Harry.

Ok... understood. Emory, how would you respond to this "opportunity"?

A fisherman has a 7" 6" rod he is fishing with. His goal, of course, is to detect that subtle bite. You have the opportunity to remove the rod from his hand and replace it with any material known to man and available today. The fisherman does not have to cast a bait with your substitute nor does he have to land a fish - he simply needs to feel a bite he otherwise would not detect with todays graphite rod material He does have to be able to manipulate it.. What would that material you provide be? And what shape would it have?

The highest sensitivity situation would be to take the rod completely out of the picture. To hold the line directly in your hand. But I am not sure that is the answer you were looking for.
The most sensitivie material from which to construct a rod will be the material that has the lowest mass density and the lowest elasticity. Carbon fiber is an excellent material in this respect. It has a high modulus of elasticity (stiffness) but low elasticity (low stretch) and it has low density and also low mass density (density per unit of length). If there was a better material I think that we would be using it.

What the heck does this have to do with eating worms?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2010 08:41PM by Emory Harry.

The "opportunity" was to see if there were a better conductor to achieve, in part, what a fisherman is trying to achieve. The criteria was meant to remove any boundries created by casting and landing a fish. Simply, is there anything out there that would do the job better with all other requirements involved in fishing eliminated.

Ahhhh Mr. Harry.... I never mentioned eating worms! Just opening a can of them! But if you have a taste for them you can certainly have my share! :>)

Thanks for the response - very enlightening. Now I've just got to figure out how to skip a 1/16oz. finess rig under a dock using only the line.

Feel? I just watch my dry fly disappear in a swirl...........

Jeff

Fishing with an accomplished nymph fisherman is a humbling experience. (I'm talking about the guys who don't use bobbers/indicators.) It seems the rascals have a sixth sense which is independent of touch, sight, or the type of rod in their hand.
Now, if you could build or buy tackle which would impart their abilities . . .

Phil,
If you actually believe that they have some sort of sixth sense that is independent of sight or feel or the equipment that they are using then I have a bridge that I might be interested in selling you. It goes from Brooklyn to Manhattan and is called the Brooklyn Bridge. It is in really good shape and I will let it go for a very good price.

I can attest to the fact that the bridge is still standing - and is in excellent condition as I just returned on a ferry ride from Manhattan to New Jersey. Now about those worms... I wonder if shape of the instrument might have an effect on feel? We (almost all) use tapered cylindrical tubes but I wonder if a tapered triangular shape might not impart more "feel"?? Not sure if this can be tested = but going back to some teachings in architecture and design a triangle is the most stable geometric pattern..........

Some Hawgs inhale the Worm in less than the blink of an eye!

Doug your fishing trip was quite successful - the bait was taken and the worm never felt a thing!

Please unhide your email address by using the Control Center.

Doug,

You could take any rod made today and make it more sensitive. Use a blank with a larger diameter with thinner walls (which would give you more stiffness at less weight). Remove some of the guides (or all of them and run the line down through the blank). Get rid of most of the handle and anything else that adds weight. Tape the reel to the blank. In short, do everything you can to make the rod lighter for the same stiffness.

The trouble is, a fishing rod will always be a compromise of sorts. In order to be able to cast it, fight a fish with it and have it hold up, there is a certainly amount of components we'll have to add and a certain amount of durability that will have to be built into the blank design. These things reduce sensitivity but are necessary if we're to have something that we can actually use for the task at hand. Building a more sensitive rod than anything out there today can easily be done, but you might find it to lack a great deal in the user friendliness department.


.............

Doug,
In the spirit of replacing that 7 ½ foot worm rod in order to detect that subtle bite….
From that same 7 ½ foot rod, I would trim an 1 ½” from the tip and 17 ½” from the butt, install a 9” split grip behind split reel seat, wrap on seven 3.5’s Fuji’s (1 being the tip). Then I’d install a Core 50MG7 reel (5.5 oz.) with 20 lb braid. Total weight well under 10 ounces. Granted, the new configuration would not cast quite as far, but it would arguably have superior agility for lure and fish control. It would inherently be more SENSITIVE and balance would no longer be an issue.
Although this works for me, I don’t expect many others to share my unconventional practices….or for that matter, agree with the benefits. But, if we’re dealing specifically with sensitivity, I’d be confident that Emory’s test method would confirm an increase.

Btw, that 17 1/2" is not a typo.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2010 08:28AM by jim spooner.

From somone who fished before mono was widely used I'd say to pay more attention to improving the line.

Bill - Your request is my command - unhidden. And - wasn't really "fishing" was just curious about a couple of things. With the plethora of materials in the wold today is there anything more sensitive than our current line of round, tappered hollow core, graphite blanks. I didn't really care if it was suitable for constructing a fishing rod or not. As well, there were no cost limitations in the "Opportunity". That said - I never really anticipated the "What's this got to do with eating worms?" question.

Tom - Your response seems to follow closely Emorys' reply. I am aware that I could render a current day fishing rod useless and make it more sensitive. And I think that's what Emory alluded to with his conclusion that the current day blanks are "it" for materials currently available. The question revolved around sensitivity and discounted functionality.

Ken - I purposely avoided the word feel. I made a base assumption that if sensitivity increased there would be a correlational increase in the ability to feel - though the correlation may not be linear. Of course there's no way to determine nor prove that relationship due to the inability to measure nor quantify "feel". However, the triangular shape is an interesting concept. Bet it would be a bear to manufacture. Wrapping guides would probably be a lot of fun too! How about a triangular blank with radiuses instead of flat planes of the triangular sufaces?

Jim - You very nearly described my next jig rod. The exceptions being the length which will be 6'6". Becuause I coose to fish with L.H. reels and avoid the R.H'ders hand swap on cast I have to go with a Shimano Aldebaran Mg which in reality is a L.H. Core Mg50 marketed in Japan and not available in the U.S. market at this time. The rod will have split grips, no fore grip, and spiral guide wrap and Fuji Titanium/Sic micro gides. The runners will be 3.5's and the stripper will be determined at build time. A single bump guide will be used to limit the weight of additional guides/wraps. Ought'a be a killer jig rod! I'm finishing up a 8' cranking stick in the next few days. Built on a MudHole CB965Blend. I weighed it last night with grips, seat and top epoxied in and it weighed in at 4.2oz with only 9-10 micro guides left to install - should come in under 5oz - not bad for an 8' cranking stick. For those that don't know... The MudHole MHX Blend series is a blend of two graphites and not a fiberglass blend.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2010 09:27AM by Doug Weissinger.

just skimming over the conversations bouncing back and forth i'd say its not the rod but the line that comes in contact with the fish thats more of the "telegraph" of the bite.

based on this fact i would say go to "electronics" build in to a rod to enhance the vibration / frequency, etc. miniature electronics could be built into the butt of the rod with very little weight added with the exception of the battery and now days they are making them much smaller.

oops, i kicked the can of worms over on the floor, now the wife is gona give me grief over it.

Good idea Terry! Taken a step futher we could add voice response to it... "Set the Hook dummy" followed by a pause then a hystical laugh "Hahahahah - you missed it!" Followed by "Please try again." Realisticly such a system would have to be capable of discerning between a bump into an object and a fish bite. And I can tell you - at times they "feel" much alike!

Doug,
This is a little off topic, but I have both the Core and Aldebaran reels and I’ve found that, there is a pesky bump on the palm side of the reel that can be uncomfortable depending on how you grip the rod/palm the reel. It is what the pivot shaft for the swing-away side plate is pressed into. Anyway, I solved the problem by grinding it (the bump) off flush.

I used to be a charter captain and rod and reel commercial fisherman, plying the waters off CT, NY, RI and MA. Standard rigging for fishing some of the fast current rips (The Race, Plum Gut, the Sluiceway) was a moderately heavy fiberglass boat rod, 50 lb braided dacron line tied to a 3 way swivel with a 20 oz sinker on a dropper off one of the swivel rings, and a bucktail on a 5', 80-100 lb mono leader on the other.

Current speed was approximately 8 kts, faster on the full and new moon. Water depth ranged from 420' up to 45' (a VERY mountainous bottom). Quarry was striped bass (30-55 lbs or so) and big bluefish, along with a few weakfish in the mix.

Given the speed of the current, the drift speed of the boat, the amount of belly in the line, and the fact that line needed to be constantly fed out to keep the jig near the bottom, it is a wonder a fisherman could feel anything. But here's what I learned: Bluefish aren't shy. They grab the jig and run, hooking themselves. Big stripers, on the other hand, were a whole different animal. They would inhale the bucktail, "taste sample" the water surrounding it, and exhale it if something didn't taste right. If I held the fore grip so my index finger was touching the blank just forward of the cork, I could detect the subtle pick-up of the striped bass. Sometimes i was just a little "tick," and sometimes it just seemed the vibrations being transmitted through all that dacron to the rod changed slightly, but in either case, when I began to set the hook HARD in these circumstances, the number of stripers in the boat increased dramatically.

Bear in mind this was low-tech fiberglass (not even E-Glass). And there was still some feeling transmitted.

A few years later Fenwick introduced a boron blank (for freshwater). The way I saw it demonstrated by the Fenwick rep was with a 5' length of 6 lb mono tied to a tip-top on the blank. I held the blank where the grip wold be. He lifted the line above the blank until it was taught, and then let it go. When the line dropped to it's maximum length, I could actually feel the vibration in the blank. That was just the weight of the line falling at the speed of gravity. I was really impressed until I tried the trick with a Fenwick HMG blank I had, and the same thing happened.

As Emory says, taking the rod out of the equation really makes a difference. Try fishing with a handline sometime...you won't believe the sensitivity.

For all practical purposes, I believe that sensitivity, like everything else, is just part of the equation. If you want something in this universe, you need to give something up. Sure, you could make the most sensitive rod possible, but what needs to be sacrificed? Every guide you wrap on a rod decreases the dampening speed of the blank, which decreases sensitivity. The closer to the tip the guides are, the more this becomes a factor. Lightening the guides helps, but (depending on the intended use of the rod), you might be giving up too much in the way of fish-fighting or casting characteristics.

The example of the nymph fisherman is a great one. A good nymph fisherman can detect pick-ups as if by magic. I can assure you with some confidence hat rod sensitivity is not the ONLY factor involved in his (or her) ability to do so. Visual cues also come into play.

This is a great thread, and I thank you for starting it, because it has caused me to think about trade-offs, as well as what I am TRULY attempting to accomplish when I build a rod. In most cases, it is simply to give the user a bit more of the characteristic (s)he values, without adversely impacting the other characteristics to any marked degree.

Your wecome Gary... I suspect the reason you could feel those bites even with a current induced bow in the line was due to the line tension created. And while this may be a little off topic as well - a light has come on for me.

I Carolia rig quite a bit. And I ALWAYS use a 1oz weight. I have fished with guys that also c'rig but use a lighter weight ranging from 1/4oz. - 3/4oz. One particular incident comes to mind. Me and a guy were fishing c'rigs. He was a believer in lighter weights and I think on that day he was using 3/8oz. while I stuck to my 1oz.. I was out catching him approx. 3:1 though we were using identical baits in the same location. He was, to say the least, fabberglasted, and even commented: "By all rights I should be out fishing you because of my lighter weight!" I figured it was just my ability to detect the light bite better than him - but never considered the "why" I could. Now I think I know.

Because I was using the 1oz. weight I could apply more tension to the main line without moving the bait, unless I wanted to. And because I could apply more tension - the subtle tap generated by a fish taking the bait at the end of a 24" co-polymer leader was transmitted up the main line better than my fishing partner that day. Without doubt there are limitations to the amount of weight I could use but I'm thinking.... would 1.5oz be out of the question? You can bet I'm going to give it a try.

One never knows what will come from a brainstorming session - which this thread was intended to be!

Emory:

The meaning of "seems" and "is" are distinctly different. Check the post you refer to. As for your gracious bridge offer, I would leap (get it?) at your offer of the Brooklyn Bridge, but I am currently involved in building a bridge to a duckblind with federal money. The completed bridge would be 2000 feet long, but as a result of the 10% across-the-board federal spending cut my bridge stops 200 feet short of the duckblind. I'm sure my lobbyists will solve this problem.