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Custom Fly Fishing Rods by Chris Lantzy, Custom Rod Maker

the pliant rod:

blog & news

Designing Your Custom Fly Rod: Rod Action

7/18/2011

 
The topic of a rod’s action can be a very confusing subject for many anglers. It’s no wonder this is so, with so many ideas, theories, & so much terminology associated with the subject. There are many different ways to discuss rod action. Here I hope to clarify the topic some with as little technical & confusing jargon as possible.

The action of a rod is the result of it’s taper. Taper is the diameter of the rod along its length or; the shape & distribution of rod material. For anyone other than a rod maker it isn’t necessary to get down to that level of detail to understand how a rod will perform, or how it compares to other rods. So when thinking of a particular rod’s action, let’s not get its taper thrown into the mix. For a basic understanding of rod action, it will only add confusion.

I have found that the easiest way to understand rod action is to think of it as “feel”. Rod feel is, in my opinion, a better description. So, the “action” of a rod is how the rod “feels” to you when the rod is flexed, cast, & when landing a fish or mending line.

That being said, rod action is mostly divided into three categories:

1.) Fast Action: The rod has a stiff feel when flexed. When casting a line, etc the rod straightens quickly.

2.) Medium Action: These rods are more flexible & pliable than fast action rods. They straighten a little more slowly & have a smoother feel. Medium rods will bend more than a fast action rod under the same line weight.

3.) Slow Action: These rods are very limber & have a much softer feel than the other actions. A slow action rod flexes much more than fast or medium action rods. This flexing, or bending, is felt much farther down the length of the rod, usually to the butt section & maybe even into the grip.

No matter which action you prefer, a good, well designed fly rod will flex progressively from tip to butt under different loads.

Also consider the number of ferrules in your rod. Obviously, multiple piece rods have more ferrules than one or two piece rods. Any ferrule will, to some degree, interrupt the action of a rod. Ferrules are (by their nature) stiffer than the rod shaft. For this reason - & not considering the practical needs of transporting & storing your rod – a two piece or one piece rod is best for feeling the action of a rod. In other words, the less ferrules your rod has, the less the action of your rod will be interrupted.

What’s the best general use fly rod? This is a common question. In my opinion, for most anglers a medium action rod is best. A medium action rod is the most adaptable to the angler’s individual timing & reflexes. Medium action rods are much more forgiving than fast action rods & they also protect delicate tippets from snapping. By making slight changes to your casting you can “speed up” a medium action rod a little, but it can be very difficult for most anglers to slow down a fast action rod. Still, the choice of rod action is a personal one & it is very important, too. Before you purchase your next fly rod, you may want to give some considerable thought to the action of the rod you choose.


Fly Fishing For Carp

7/6/2011

 
Pursuing carp with a fly is actually harder than you might think it would be. As kids, we would sometimes catch one by accident when fishing. Of course that didn't mean they weren't fun to catch anyway.

I don't remember when I decided to try to catch a carp on a fly rod, but after many failures I started asking around about carp, to see how I could improve my chances. What I learned was that going after carp was a lot like fishing the flats for Bone fish, something I had not had the opportunity to do. I'm a bass, trout, crappie, walleye, etc man myself & had never needed to learn these kinds of techniques. (ever catch a walleye on a fly??)

There has been growing interest in recent years about catching carp on a fly & for good reason. It can be very fun & challenging. Plus, when you connect with even the smallest of carp, look out.

After many tries I finally hooked up with my first carp several years back. It was near dark on a late spring evening & even though it was a small one, you'd have thought I set a world record by my reaction. After trying & failing many times I was elated to catch my first (be it oh, so small) carp.

Here is a great article about fly fishing for carp. I discovered it on the Fishing For History blog - a great daily read I highly recommend you check out. The article focuses on the carp's great ability to hear, which is one of the first things you learn when trying to catch them. The slightest noise will spook them.

If you haven't given it a try, I think you should definitely try your hand at fly fishing for carp. If you live in an area where it's too hot this time of year for trout fishing & you want to go after something else besides bass or pan fish, give carp a try. Once you land your first one, you'll be hooked!!!
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A real trophy!!!

Designing Your Custom Fly Rod: Rod Varnish

7/5/2011

 
The following pertains to the varnish on split-bamboo fly rods:

The varnish on a rod not only should look good, but offer protection to the rod. Obviously, you're going to be using your fly rod around water & you don't want the raw bamboo exposed to moisture. Plus over the years, you will put the rod through it's paces & things are bound to happen. So the rod has to be protected from the water, bumping into objects like rocks & bramble bushes, exposure to the sun, etc. A good varnish will also need to be flexible, allowing the rod to bend naturally, while still remaining hard enough to protect the rod.

Rod makers overwhelmingly choose to use a marine-grade spar varnish. This type of finish has all the properties needed to protect a rod, while allowing it to flex. Sometimes though, rod makers will use a tung-oil based finish - especially when they want a low-build, satin finish on a rod. These types of finishes are usually applied by hand, while spar varnish can be brushed or poured onto the rod. Spar varnish can also be applied by dipping the rod into a tank of varnish.

So basically, many rod makers coat both the rod shaft & guide wraps with the same varnish. Others prefer to coat the rod blank with a hand rubbed oil based finish, then wrap the guides & varnish the guide wraps with spar varnish separately. I use either of the two techniques, depending on what you want. My standard finishing method is to cover both wraps & rod shafts with varnish over a completed rod. This gives the rod a traditional look, as this has been the standard varnishing method for generations. With a hand-rubbed finish, both the rod shafts & guide wraps receive several coats of the different finishes. The result of this method is a rod that has a subtle contrast in appearance between the rod shafts & the silk wraps.

Eventually after many fishing seasons, your rod will need to be re-finished. There are rods in use that are 100 years old. The trick to a rod that age is keeping the varnish in good condition & having it re-finished when needed. No matter what kind of finish you choose to have on your rod, you want one that will look good without bumps & runs & will protect the rod for many years.

Independence Day

7/2/2011

 
Here it is, in it's entirety - our Deceleration of Independence. As we enjoy the food, friends, fishing, & fire works this holiday, let us not forget the reason for the occasion or the spirit of this document. Have a safe & happy July 4th everyone!!!

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton



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