Ran into this article today. What I found interesting was that the ERN of the rod really had very little bearing on how far the rod casted. In fact just the opposite seemed to be achieved. Check it out...

[www.sexyloops.com]

ERN=Power. So you're saying it appeared to you that rod power had very little bearing on how far the rods cast. However, it appears to me that rod power actually had a great deal to do with how the rods cast. For any given casting weight, you cannot simply expect casts to get longer and longer as rods get more and more powerful (which I believe was one of their conclusions after performing the test casting). At some point, the casting weight won't load the rod any longer. Even with a fly line that gets heavier and heavier as you push more of it past the tip, there comes a point of diminishing returns.

The action of the rod also plays a role in casting distance. This is why 2 rods with the same overall power (identical ERN figures) do not necessarily cast the same distance per the same effort. What would be very interesting, would be to take a number of rods all with the same ERN and retest. The casting distances would still be different and then you could look for attributes other than just power for the differences.

I watched the guys at the Expo casting contest and noticed how some heaved so hard on the cast that they snapped the line. Others achieved the same or greater distance with not much more than a snap of the wrist.

To achieve the longest casts, you have to match the power of the rod to the weight being cast. There is a window there and if you get too far outside it on either end, you'll lose casting distance.

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I did not find anything really surprising there. There is a sweet spot on any rod for any given casting weight. Even if you took a 5 ounce lead sinker and cast it with different surf rods you would have one that was more closely matched in Power, or ERN or whatever you want to call it that would cast the longest distance. I have some old Hatteras type heavers that are stiff as broomsticks and you would barely get them to bend with a 5 ounce sinker. Other less powerful rods would cast that weight further that the heavers would.

If I had made a wager on which of those rods would have consistently cast the furtherest, my money would have been on any that came in between an ERN of 5.5 and 7.0. Any less power and the rod would have been overloaded. Much more power than 7.0 and I do not think any length of a 5 wt. line would have been capable of fully loading it. This seems to have been borne out in their testing. I realize that many other factors come into play, but I do not believe you could move too far outside that range and expect to do well distance wise with a 5 wt line. Rod power MUST be a factor in casting distance per the weight being cast!

Tom Kirkman Wrote:
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>
> I watched the guys at the Expo casting contest and
> noticed how some heaved so hard on the cast that
> they snapped the line. Others achieved the same or
> greater distance with not much more than a snap of
> the wrist.
>

I noticed the same thing during the contest. My first thought was that the guys casting so hard had rods that were too stiff for the weight everybody was casting. When you hit that point where you have the right weight on the right rod you get your best distance with less than your hardest casting. "SWEET SPOT" is a pretty good term for that situation.

If the question on the Sexyloops test was why didn't the most powerful rod cast the farthest, my layman's opinion would be that they didn't have enough weight there to fully load it.

I had to go back and reread it several times. Good work. Thanks for posting it Larry.

I noticed this quote >And of course, we tested the hypothesis that the stiffest rod would be the best for getting distance.<

I still come back to the same conclusion that you cannot simply keep going stiffer and stiffer and expect to cast farther and farther. At some point you will not have enough casting weight to fully load the rod. I also noticed the Orvis rod that had the best average overall distance was a very fast action rod. No AA figure but they did give the Orvis Flex rating of 9.5 which if memory serves me is a very fast action rod. Although the Orvis was not the most powerful rod in the test I think it probably loaded the best with that amount of weight and the very fast action gave it the greatest versatility to perform with that line.

I didn't see any surprises. There is an optimum amount of power for any given amount of casting weight. If they had put 7wt lines on those same rods the results would be entirely different with the more powerful rods doing better.

I believe the results would have been a lot different had they given each caster 15 to 30 minutes practice with each rod prior to posting scores. The faster rods have to be learned to be cast effectively that's why they didn't perform up to snuff and they are not for the timid. The TCR is quite demanding. The slower rods were given the advantage by being easier to time for the uninitiated.
Strange set of testing criteria.

Eugene Moore

Eugene Moore Wrote:
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> I believe the results would have been a lot
> different had they given each caster 15 to 30
> minutes practice with each rod prior to posting
> scores. The faster rods have to be learned to be
> cast effectively that's why they didn't perform up
> to snuff and they are not for the timid. The TCR
> is quite demanding. The slower rods were given the
> advantage by being easier to time for the
> uninitiated.
> Strange set of testing criteria.
>
> Eugene Moore

I though about that as well. But then I would think that most of those guys probably use pretty fast action rods in competition. I do agree however that they should have been allowed more time. Never the less I found the article interesting.

The standard deviation said it all.
Most of the casters were trying to find how hard they could push the power rods.
Faster rod higher deviation. The cannons keep asking to get hit harder and they continue to deliver.
I've seen proficient casters spend upwards of an hour to wring everything out of a high performance rod. The reward was generally the backing shooting thru the guides. The good casters throw a lot of rods in a year and each one is different.
What if your first experience driving consisted of 4 minutes then a trip to the local track.
4 casts isn't much time for any caster. Every rod I build gets a 15 to 20 minute casting session short and long just to see strength and weakness. That's the only way I feel the blank and build can be adequately asessed.

Eugene Moore

So much is made of being able to cast long distances. I find more often, that if I'm looking for a more USEFUL 5 wt. rod, it has to be able to perform well when protecting 6X tippets. I haven't found a rod with an ERN greater than 6.0 worth a darn for this application. It helps to have this because I don't really want to walk 2 miles back to the truck to get a 3 wt. or 4 wt. rod when the size 20 Baetis start hatching and the fish start looking up and ignoring my size 10 golden stonefly nymphs. Versitility is the key, not hero casts. Besides, controling a fish 80' out is near impossible! Good to see that the average distance winner was NOT the higher ERN rated rod, but still of little use in the real world of actual fishing.

Torin makes a good point. The best distance casting I can do with a 5wt line is with a rod with a power rating of about 6.4. Anything above that and I cannot get good distance, primarily because I can't load the darn rod. No matter how hard you push, if the weight isn't there it just isn't there. My guess is that even with more practice the Orvis rod would have won anyway. It just had the right amount of power to do all that can be done with the 5wt line they chose.

Why pick five weight rods to test distance casting? Sure, in some circumstances anglers are anxious to wring every last foot of distance out of a five weight, but I suspect the vast majority of actual casts made while fishing are less than 33 feet in length. At such distancs a "cannon" is more of a hindrance than a help.
If the distance test had been conducted with nine weight rods the conclusions with respect to ERN would have been considerably more useful.

Everything should be relative. I doubt anything would be different with 9-weights - there would still come a point where the 9-weight line would no longer load the rod and distance would suffer.

"And of course, we tested the hypothesis that the stiffest rod would be the best for getting distance."

This statement is certainly not true and they proved it to themselves, although it's a bit generic in nature. As myself and others have said here, you can't simply keep moving to a stiffer and stiffer rod and keep getting more and more distance while casting the same amount of weight.

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Just from what I've noticed with my own casting. I don't think the main thrust of power comes from the butt of the rod. I feel (and I'm no expert) that the power really comes from the mid section of a rod. It must be light enough so it can be fully loaded with "X" amount of line. Rods with super fast tips and a "2x4" the rest of the way dont have the ability to transfer the power and fail in my opinion. Tom, am I correct on this? All the real cannons ive casted seem to get the reserve power from the mid section.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2010 06:09PM by Larry Damore.

I can't disagree - my own subjective opinion from the many rods I've cast is that you're correct.

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I don't think CCS was designed to give you a formula for maximum distance.

You're right, it wasn't and I don't think the SexyLoops people were trying to prove otherwise. They wanted to see if the most powerful rod in the test would also be the one that cast the furthest.

The used the CCS ERN measurement to discern power because as they said, "The CCS system is developed to describe and compare the stiffness and action of fly rods in a well-defined and objective way."

It wasn't the CCS that was on trial - it was the hypothesis that "... the stiffest rod would be the best for getting distance."


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All great comments. My take on the outcome, intentional or not, was that rods built for the 'arms race' can be somewhat impractical. I think the test adds validity to CCS. There seems to be a trend to under-rate rods for distance bragging rights. The consequence is difficulty finding a sweet spot under real world/practical conditions and use. TCRs seem to have a bad rep in this area.