Fly Fishing

Paull · Posted: Wed 11/15/06 9:24 pm Post subject: balancing rod and reel

How do you make sure your fly fishing rod is well balanced? Someone told me years ago that an outfit is balanced when you can hold the rod strait simply by placing one finger underneath the rod directly in front of the handle once the reel and line are in place.
Am anxious to hear your response as I have just purchased a new Hardy rod ( waited years for this one ), and I want to make sure that I put the right reel on it.
Paull

jeremy · Location: Portland, Maine

hmmm ... i'd like to know this too .. i got no clue to the answer ...

AvidDavid · Location: Long Island, NY

Paull:

I'm pretty much of an old timer (although I like to think that I'm young enough to keep up with all these successful fly fisherpersons). I am aware of the balancing issue that you mention. My grandfather, who introduced me to flyfishing about 4-5 decades ago also showed me about this balance issue.

I'm not sure just how prevalent the concept is today with lighter equipment and different bend characteristics of rods (full flex, moderate flex, tip flex). However, yes, I do recall looking at where the fly rod/fly reel combination could be balanced... where the rod would lie horizontally when rested on an outstretched finger. Usually this point was near the junction of the cork handle with the fiberglass (Note that I used the forbidden word "fiberglass" because I am that old). This was done with line on the reel. I think that my grandfather's thinking (he was not the originator of the concept) was that by holding the rod near this balance point while casting, you wouldn't be fighting a lot of unbalanced weight thereby reducing wrist fatigue. However, now I believe that the fatigue from casting may be more related to the moment of inertia of the rod/reel combination (sort of an expression of how much mass is at a certain distance from the pivot point (your hand) during casting).

Now I will become the devil's advocate. I do not remember whether the line was totally on the reel or some of it was threaded through the guides. A lot has changed since back in the old days (when I used level fly line!). Clearly, this "balance point" will change depending on how much fly line is threaded through the guides. Certainly, as line is removed from the reel the balance point will move toward the rod tip (not much but in that direction). In addition, any line threaded through the guides will also move the balance point toward the rod tip. Certainly today nobody uses anything but non-level fly line (mostly weight forward, I suspect). So since the majority of the fly line weight is in the first 30 feet, just how much is threaded through the guides and peeled off the reel may make a substantial shift in the balance point. So how much importance can we place on where this balance point is? I don't know.

(I'm sure that many will say "There goes AvidDavid again, writing endless volumes about something he knows little/nothing about." And I must say that I have little defense. But for some reason, I feel better doing it)

Cheers!