So I called Penn today to ask them why their rods have two rating for line class

Started by Nasty Wendy, April 29, 2017, 05:39:06 AM

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UKChris

I too put little or no faith in the rating of rods by manufacturers. At best, those figures will have been arrived at by anglers on the staff who know their fishing, and we all know that all angers can accurately rate a rod and line to match  ::). At worst, the rating will have been guessed at by a technician who may be great at making blanks but who knows whether they fish them or not.

I spent a happy afternoon with my rods (stand-up style in the 30-80+lb range), a big reel, some very heavy dacron (to take stretch out of the equation) and a spring balance. I then measured the pull exerted by the rod at three points with the drag locked down:   
(a) just bent, as when handling a fish delicately but keeping tension on the line
(b) the happy fighting curve
(c) eye-watering, pull out the stops ,this rod can take no more moment!
(I felt one or two might actually go bang, but they didn't.)

The figures were interesting and I found that some rods started to bend under a lower load than others even though their 'fighting power' was similar and yet again some rods had a lot more power in reserve than others which bottomed out quickly after the fighting curve point.

Also the 'feel' of some rods of similar mid-power differed greatly when you continued to load them up. Some would bend more and more but not increase the pull on the scales - interesting - whilst some would go 'hard' on me, would not bend further but would really increase the loading on the scales if I pulled harder. Those were the ones I feared might bust if I overdid it just a tiny bit more.

As a guide, the scale readings I got across the whole arsenal varied from 6lb to nearly 40lb though I make no claim to being able to hold anything like 40lb drag in any fishing situation outside of a gameboat fighting chair.

What's the point? Well, now that I know how much power my rods can actually exert in the way I hold and use them, I know which line strength matches them and my own technique. And it confirms that rod manufacturers know not of what they speak.

For example: one maker, two rods, both labelled 50-130. One is perfect for 50lb line, no more: the other is perfect for 80lb line, no more. Neither is capable of exerting enough power to make use of 130lb line, so why the label? If you mistreated the rod, you could break it with those line weights.

This may not be scientific but when repeating the exercise, the results were reproducible enough for me to be content.

I'd like to try this with a better rig, bracing the rod and loading it in front of a grating to show the deflection under increasing load, taking photographs etc. but life it too short  ;D

Nasty Wendy

Quote from: UKChris on May 05, 2017, 04:59:03 PM
I too put little or no faith in the rating of rods by manufacturers. At best, those figures will have been arrived at by anglers on the staff who know their fishing, and we all know that all angers can accurately rate a rod and line to match  ::). At worst, the rating will have been guessed at by a technician who may be great at making blanks but who knows whether they fish them or not.

I spent a happy afternoon with my rods (stand-up style in the 30-80+lb range), a big reel, some very heavy dacron (to take stretch out of the equation) and a spring balance. I then measured the pull exerted by the rod at three points with the drag locked down:   
(a) just bent, as when handling a fish delicately but keeping tension on the line
(b) the happy fighting curve
(c) eye-watering, pull out the stops ,this rod can take no more moment!
(I felt one or two might actually go bang, but they didn't.)

The figures were interesting and I found that some rods started to bend under a lower load than others even though their 'fighting power' was similar and yet again some rods had a lot more power in reserve than others which bottomed out quickly after the fighting curve point.

Also the 'feel' of some rods of similar mid-power differed greatly when you continued to load them up. Some would bend more and more but not increase the pull on the scales - interesting - whilst some would go 'hard' on me, would not bend further but would really increase the loading on the scales if I pulled harder. Those were the ones I feared might bust if I overdid it just a tiny bit more.

As a guide, the scale readings I got across the whole arsenal varied from 6lb to nearly 40lb though I make no claim to being able to hold anything like 40lb drag in any fishing situation outside of a gameboat fighting chair.

What's the point? Well, now that I know how much power my rods can actually exert in the way I hold and use them, I know which line strength matches them and my own technique. And it confirms that rod manufacturers know not of what they speak.

For example: one maker, two rods, both labelled 50-130. One is perfect for 50lb line, no more: the other is perfect for 80lb line, no more. Neither is capable of exerting enough power to make use of 130lb line, so why the label? If you mistreated the rod, you could break it with those line weights.

This may not be scientific but when repeating the exercise, the results were reproducible enough for me to be content.

I'd like to try this with a better rig, bracing the rod and loading it in front of a grating to show the deflection under increasing load, taking photographs etc. but life it too short  ;D


I enjoyed that read.  You went further than I have thats for sure.
Hi I'm Clay.
Lets raise our children to be Super Fishermen not Superficial men and women.

The more I interact with people the more I like my dog.

boon

An interesting article I read somewhere; can't remember the location but I will paraphrase from memory:

A blank has two features; power and strength. People often equate the two, but they are very different and in no way inherently linked.

The strength of the rod is it's ability to get bent and not snap. You could build a rod from a fairly thin, barely tapered solid fibreglass rod. Think something like a long horse whip. It would be ridiculously strong; you could probably bend it in a circle, or lift 100lb with it, but it would completely deform. You would essentially be using the "rod" like a piece of rope to pull on the load.
An example of this I've seen in the real world was when a friend tried to break a children's rod, a Shimano KidStix. This rod is rated something like 4-6kg and is a very basic fibreglass blank. It took 34kg (off the top of my head) at a 45 degree angle to snap it. Crazy strong, but very little "power"

The power is the ability for a rod to lift things without collapsing and just becoming like a rope, as per the example above. I fish with quite a few very modern pure graphite/carbon fibre rods, they are exceptionally light, sensitive and have huge amounts of power, but they do not have much "strength" - if they are abused, point-loaded or high-sticked they will easily snap.

Carefully combining fibreglass and carbon fibre/graphite can give you a rod with loads of strength and a lot of power - great example is a modern mechanical jigging rod; they have huge strength and also loads of lifting power.

Here's an extreme example; a Jigging Master Monster Game being pushed right to the limit:



At this point, in my opinion, the rod has gone past it's "power" rating and folded up completely; at the same time the angler is probably putting on >50lb of pull, and the bend in that rod is just evil!

oc1

Isn't what you're calling "power" the same as "action".  A fast action rod transfers the power towards the butt slowly and with much effort.  A slow action or noodle rod transfers power towards the butt quickly and with little effort.

When all the power and effort reaches the butt it is ready to break.  A rod should be designed to break at the butt.

What you're calling "strength" is sort of like what some call "weight".  A light weight rod will break with less effort than a heavy weight rod.

-steve

Swami805

There really is no standard for rating rods but you're usually pretty safe in the middle of the line rating. A 20-50 would be good for 30 or 40lb.
Action usually refers to the taper of the rod so fast action would stop bending closer to the tip and slow action would bend down by the handle.
Power would be the amount of weight it takes to bend the rod.
I've only seen weight used for fly rods for the size line to use.
Also the material the blank is made of will effect the rods performance but it's more in the way it "feels". I don't know how you would rate that. You can take a rod by the same company with same ratings and they can feel very different. "S" glass, "E"glass", graphite/glass composite, all graphite all act differently but the ratings can be the same and made off the same mandrel.
Not likely to ever be a uniform rating system since they're are so many things involved
Do what you can with that you have where you are

Tightlines667

I would just mention that there are IGFA line class rated rods that adhere to a standard.
Hope springs eternal
for the consumate fishermen.

UKChris

Although IGFA rated trolling rods are normally pretty accurately matched to the IGFA line class they are rated for, there is no standard here either and IGFA issues no guidelines nor rates rods on behalf of makers. It's down to the blank maker and the rod maker to decide. Most well-known brands do a good job but in the past some UK rods were woefully underpowered for the rating they were given (and there are still plain silly ratings applied to some rods over here).

For heavy tackle (80lb and 130lb - I'm too feeble to contemplate using '180-unlimited' gear though I have a Harnell Royal VII - a beast), I have found clear differences in the actual power exerted by different rods (as well as differences in the shape of their curve under loading). Thus, I have rods I like for heavy tackle and I've used rods I'm not so happy with.

For example, in the 130lb class (and I'm not a huge, weighty guy), some IGFA 130lb rods I've used proved a little too soft even for me (two very different Shimano models comes to mind) and yet I've used a couple of the more modern 130lb rods that were too stiff for me when fishing blue marlin. I could actually tell the difference in use. The tendency towards stiffer rods might be OK for giant bluefin, but I've not fished for them.

With 80lb rods, I have a lovely old Harnell Royal V rated IGFA 80lb but it is soft when compared to my Penn X (carbon fibre) IGFA 80lb rod.

In summary, and of course it is only my opinion, IGFA ratings are closer to being correct than other more general line ratings provided, but even IGFA class ratings have differences depending on the choices made by the blank maker and rod builder. Most guys won't worry too much and are happy with the manufacturer's ratings but some anglers prefer rods they have got to know through use.

Personally, I prefer a mid-range 130 (such as the white and black Penn and old Fenwick, the Kennedy-Fisher blanks and similar in glass) for 130lb line but either a softer 130 or an extra-stiff 80 (like the Penn X carbon-fibre) for 80lb line.

The reason is simple - if the rod is too soft, I can't use even my meagre body weight to full advantage to lift a deep fish but if the rod is too stiff, I get catapulted out of the chair when the fish kicks hard!

Cheers





SoCalAngler

I posted this a few years back on this forum. This was pulled of the IGFA website.

The IGFA does not rate rods so whenever a manufacture says their rods are IGFA rated they must follow these guidelines only.

E. ROD

1. Rods must comply with sporting ethics and customs.
Considerable latitude is allowed in the choice of a rod, but rods giving
the angler an unfair advantage will be disqualified. This rule is intended
to eliminate the use of unconventional rods.
2. The rod tip must be a minimum of 40 inches (101.6 cm) in
length. The rod butt cannot exceed 27 inches (68.58 cm) in length.
These measurements must be made from a point directly beneath the
center of the reel. A curved butt is measured in a straight line. When
the rod butt is placed in a gimbal, the measurement from the center of
the reel seat to the pivot point of the gimbal can be no more than 27
inches. (The above measurements do not apply to surfcasting rods.


As you see there is nothing about line class ratings

Tightlines667

Quote from: SoCalAngler on May 12, 2017, 02:12:58 AM
I posted this a few years back on this forum. This was pulled of the IGFA website.

The IGFA does not rate rods so whenever a manufacture says their rods are IGFA rated they must follow these guidelines only.

E. ROD

1. Rods must comply with sporting ethics and customs.
Considerable latitude is allowed in the choice of a rod, but rods giving
the angler an unfair advantage will be disqualified. This rule is intended
to eliminate the use of unconventional rods.
2. The rod tip must be a minimum of 40 inches (101.6 cm) in
length. The rod butt cannot exceed 27 inches (68.58 cm) in length.
These measurements must be made from a point directly beneath the
center of the reel. A curved butt is measured in a straight line. When
the rod butt is placed in a gimbal, the measurement from the center of
the reel seat to the pivot point of the gimbal can be no more than 27
inches. (The above measurements do not apply to surfcasting rods.


As you see there is nothing about line class ratings

True, these are the IGFA rules dictating rods designated as legal gear,

But..

There is a tradition and expectation of consistency within a given IGFA line class blank (within and accross manufacturers).  The rods were designed with fishing that class of IGFA rated mono, and a reel designed to fish that class, with the ~1/3 drag at strike/ up to ~50% of line class at full... yardstick.  

The rule generally means that..

"The IGFA Line Class equates to about 2.5 times the test curve*, so a 30lb IGFA class rod will have test curve of around 12lb "

*Test curve of a rod is nothing more than the minimum load required to bend it through 90 degrees.

So typically a rod marked as 'IGFA' rated will adhere to this guidline and speaks more to the 'backbone' or power rating of the rod.

These can be further classified in terms of action.  Action describes how fast or slow the taper is and how quickly it loads, or returns to straight when a load is removed, and how far down the rod it bends.

Rod length and weight, as well as guide spacing can vary within a given rating.. but manufacturers typically recommend specific guides, and spacing for these IGFA rated blanks.

Here's an older AT post on IGFA rod rating...

http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=9074.0
Hope springs eternal
for the consumate fishermen.