herb: An exception to the parity trend in rods and components are the "fly rod shootouts", which combine subjective judgments and actual measurements in feet and inches for distance and accuracy in casting. The issue of rod lifting strength and breaking strength is ignored, however. Even with these tests the subjective judgments are suspect since the identities of the rods are not "double-blind" protected: the testers know the brand and the model of the rod they are subjectively evaluating. I know of no formal, published objective tests of spinning rod performance, where parity apparently reigns supreme.

Absolutely. The problem with the "fly rod shootouts" is that the rods don't all possess the same power. Not all "10-weights" are the same power.

Now if they took a group of rods, all rated at say, 10.5 on the CCS ERN scale, you could possibly deliver some valid results. But such a competition among rods all listed as 10-weight yet possessing wildly different power levels, hardly constitutes any sort of objective or relative test.

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Phil , very good point as usual , i always forget the fly rod angle since i don't have any experience in that area . The fact that the testers already know the rod they're testing cannot be overstated . I 100% agree that it would be a far more interesting and telling shootout if the test casters did NOT know what model rod they were testing .


Great points by Tom as well about 10 weights not all being the same power even though called 10 weights .


I got to try to remember you're a fly rod guru and much of what i talk about is surf rods , very different beasts .