How much do upgrade kits help with casting distance?

[Tiddlerbasher]

For UK beach casting I use a 14' rod designed to cast 5oz and an Akios 551 Shuttle (an Ambassadeur 5500 clone). I modded the reel with hybrid ceramic bearings (oiled with TSI for beach work - no oil for dry casting). The reel already had a large knobby style adjustable magnetic brake which worked fine. Cf drags and light grease. The reel has a machined one piece frame that holds everything in alignment very well. I load the reel with 12lb mono and a shock leader. Dry casting, with the 14' rod I can get 160yds. With a borrowed 15' rod I did manage to break the 200yds barrier a couple of times only using a semi pendulum cast. For real fishing with bait and weight I can manage 130-140yds on a good day
If I really try and punch the cast I get less distance and often the bait flies off. A bit like fly fishing you've got to load the rod properly for the cast to work. I reckon the ceramic bearings gave me about 20yds on a good cast.

[Ron Jones]

And there you go. 20 yard improvement, or 15%, on what would otherwise be a 110-120 yard cast. If you gave that rig to someone who usually casts 30 yards, and they don't make a mess, I'd guess a 5-10% improvement of 3 or 4 yards. The better you are, the more you can take advantage of the upgrades.

As an aside, this works in cars and basically everything else. If you can normally drive a car around a track at 60 MPH, and a professional driver can get it around the same track at 150MPH. A 10% improvement in performance optained by the professional will probably do nothing to your time and might slow it down.

Ron

[oc1]

I tune the reel to be thumbless casting cross wind.  That would forfeit a few yards down wind but you can make up for it by just putting more power behind the rod down wind and using a higher trajectory.  It still won't over run.  Throwing into the wind I start to use thumb and lower the trajectory.

The new centrifugal brakes are adjusted by engaging or disengaging brake shoes like the older styles but also have an additional fine adjustment ramp.  They can be tuned as precisely as adjustable magnets.

The biggest thing I throw is 0.4 ounce.  Rods nine to eleven feet.  It's repetitive cast and retrieve and I want to be thinking about the fish and their terrain, not the mechanics of casting.

-steve

[fishhawk]

Everytime I read this I want to comment (mainly disagree with someone) then decide to leave it as there are simply too many variables in this discussion and it will take a very long explanation and then some will probably still disagree.

Most of the guys I fish with are pretty competent casters and use suitable tackle to achieve whatever the objective may be on a particular occasion.     We try to lay our lure accurately in front and over moving shoals of Yellowtail, which may be 10 yds away or out of reach.  The type of fishing we do involves casting, lots of casting under all sort of conditions, usually in strong wind, sometimes up to 40 knots, mostly coming from the side(s).     Everything affects your cast, even the height you are above the water.   This is just a little background.

OK,
I'll display my ignorance. Can you really tune brakes down to where you don't need to thumb the spool at all? And the line still goes out when you cast?

Wow, who'd a thought.
Ron

Yes, it is perfectly possible to cast a conventional reel and only use your thumb once to stop the reel turning at the end of your cast.

To do that you need to be in perfect control of your setup, and you essentially need to use a magnetic cast control system, preferably an adjustable system, but static works as well.  I have never tried it on a centrifugal cast control, they just don't work for me but perhaps it's also possible.   What is important is that you have reasonably stable wind conditions and preferably not from the front, or in your face.


For 30 years I used only the "educated thumb" method to control my cast with perfect results.    Many of my friends still fish like that and can outcast me easily.   From about 2005 I started to experiment with Magnetic cast control systems and eventually concluded that they make casting easier, especially very quick casts.    They do restrict your distance very marginally but I've chosen to stay with them.

Now someone who is a competitive dry caster will probably come in and claim the opposite, but remember, I cast under fishing conditions which is a very big difference to dry casting.   I need to use line that is at minimum 0.5 mm thick (mono), a reel that is adequate to hold a Yellowtail and pull it through structure, a rod with lots of backbone that can't usually be longer than 11ft, and so on!

Finally, Ive experimented with casting a long long time and from about 2005 went out to try to improve my casting distance and concluded that very little I did to my tackle could change the fact that 142 yds was as far as I could get and that still holds.
I even went to the Gym to increase my back and arm strength which definitively plays a role.

Isn't it strange that when that pinnacle (cor's 145 yds) is reached, you can't get any further? I'm at about 130-140 yds w/ 8 different reels n rods.So regardless of what i'm throwing I get about the same.....but my buddy who is 6'7" n weighs close to 300 can smoke my butt and he never practices! He just throws as hard as he can! So Cor I reckon we need more lead i our ####!

[Cor]

Isn't it strange that when that pinnacle (cor's 145 yds) is reached, you can't get any further? I'm at about 130-140 yds w/ 8 different reels n rods.So regardless of what i'm throwing I get about the same.....but my buddy who is 6'7" n weighs close to 300 can smoke my butt and he never practices! He just throws as hard as he can! So Cor I reckon we need more lead i our ####!

A stronger rod that releases its energy faster, will cast further, everything else being the same.     When you use a rod that is too strong for the caster, that caster will not get more distance and will probably try harder, leading to a bigger chance of a blow up.    Also when using a rod too strong for the caster to load, accuracy suffers first!

[Ron Jones]

Lets remember that we are talking about fishing. Nothing makes you more frustrated than watching your bait go sailing off into the sunset while its lips are falling to the water with a hook in it. There is a proper rod reel combination for everything, that is why my wife feels I have too many rods and reels.
Ron