03-19-2012, 05:23 AM
Another dude here who's in and out of the forum a lot. I started flyfishing at about 15 when I ordered a fly rod from Bob Marriott's, back when that meant filling out an order form and mailing in a check. I guess that makes it the dark ages. I've been fly fishing off and on ever since then. I'm a pretty good cast w/ my 6-weight SA rod. (Original rod which was MUCH nicer was stolen many years ago when someone broke into the storage unit next to the front door of our apartment, along with my beloved 6'6" Shakespeare Sigma Medium-light spinning rod.)
I picked up another decent (not great) 8-weight rod to go with the SA Concept LA reel that I got at wally-world on clearance for $10 a couple of years ago. I intended to use it for bass and the like along with using shooting lines on lakes for bigger trout. I picked up some 8-weight WF line, rigged everything up with a pretty large woolly bugger, and proceeded to try it out over at Salem Pond. I couldn't cast the thing worth anything. It almost always just piled up in the water in front of me. I could roll cast it pretty well to get it out far enough that I knew I had the full belly of the line out, but it still wouldn't do anything.
I thought my timing might be off because of not fly casting for a year, but when I pulled out my other outfit, everything did exactly what I thought it should do. I watched rod while casting both of them and it looked like the 8-wt was just too stiff for the line on it. It didn't bend much at all, even when double hauling it.
I picked up some Cortland 444 WF-9-F line in peach (it's so purty) from Sportsmans warehouse yesterday and I'm thinking about using it on this rod to see if it helps. I know that with split bamboo rods and some of the older fiberglass rods, changing line weights is detrimental to the life of the rod. But I've always read that graphite rods are much more forgiving of movement up or down by one line weight.
Anybody have any ideas or suggestions on this before I do something that might require me to buy a real 9-weight rod. [
] I think I'll try to turn the old 8-weight line into a shooting head for the 6-weight rod. Could be fun.
Matt
[signature]
I picked up another decent (not great) 8-weight rod to go with the SA Concept LA reel that I got at wally-world on clearance for $10 a couple of years ago. I intended to use it for bass and the like along with using shooting lines on lakes for bigger trout. I picked up some 8-weight WF line, rigged everything up with a pretty large woolly bugger, and proceeded to try it out over at Salem Pond. I couldn't cast the thing worth anything. It almost always just piled up in the water in front of me. I could roll cast it pretty well to get it out far enough that I knew I had the full belly of the line out, but it still wouldn't do anything.
I thought my timing might be off because of not fly casting for a year, but when I pulled out my other outfit, everything did exactly what I thought it should do. I watched rod while casting both of them and it looked like the 8-wt was just too stiff for the line on it. It didn't bend much at all, even when double hauling it.
I picked up some Cortland 444 WF-9-F line in peach (it's so purty) from Sportsmans warehouse yesterday and I'm thinking about using it on this rod to see if it helps. I know that with split bamboo rods and some of the older fiberglass rods, changing line weights is detrimental to the life of the rod. But I've always read that graphite rods are much more forgiving of movement up or down by one line weight.
Anybody have any ideas or suggestions on this before I do something that might require me to buy a real 9-weight rod. [
] I think I'll try to turn the old 8-weight line into a shooting head for the 6-weight rod. Could be fun.Matt
[signature]