Rare catch (for me)

[jurelometer]

I have a question.   Holding the butt of the rod horizontal will give you the strongest way to deadlift something as the bend is 90 degr.

If you keep holding the rod in that position and add more weight slowly, it will start to flex more towards the rear using more of the rods backbone and therefore in theory bearing more weight until it becomes too much and breaks.

Is there an obvious spot where the rod would break if the blank is perfectly made and has no weaker or unevenly thin wall areas?

My thinking is that it will break somewhere at the rear, near the holders front hand in this case?   I have repaired many broken rods, nearly all broken in the front half probably as a result of high sticking.

Something for the engineers or scientists. 

Straight pull with no bend in the rod gives you the least leverage working against you, and won't break the rod because it is not being bent- and therefore the most dead-lift capacity.     Bends past 90 degrees concentrate the load on a small section of blank toward the tip, and don't provide much purpose when fishing- hence the 90 degree rule.  But even below 90 degrees, less bend is always more powerful.

If you clamp the rod horizontally to a work bench at the reel seat, hang a line from the reel thorough the tip and keep adding weight to the end of the line, you should see that start of the curve the 90 degree bend keeps moving toward the butt, as you noted.   In my experience, at the point of overload, you can feel the butt bend as if it no longer has increasing progression of stiffness.  This is where bad things will happen, as the load will start concentrate at the apex of a decreasing diameter curve.  There will always be an apex in a bend, and this is where the load will concentrate and the breakage should occur.
The specif location of the apex will vary depending on rod angle, blank construction, and guide style/location.


The few non-highstick, genuine overload rod deaths that I have witnessed had the apex/breakage spot about a foot and a half above the reel seat. Bendy rods can break at the stiff spot where the blank meets the reel seat. 

Fly rods spread  the load a bit more uniformly along the bottom 70-80% of the blank, and are stiff with pretty tiny wall thickness.  I have seen a couple overloaded fly rods blow up in several places at the same time.   Not sure why it happens this way. The failure at one spot must somehow shock the next spot in line.  It looks and sounds like a single break, but I would wager that it is a series.  I start sweating when I can feel the blank bending the cork grip...

-j

[Ron Jones]

  I start sweating when I can feel the blank bending the cork grip...

-j

That's interesting, I don't feel I'm fishing until I feel the rod flexing under the seat; but I'm not thrilled unless the tip touche the but!

Takes all kinds.

The Man

[steelfish]

Nice mod, should do the trick. The only difference is Trevala 'S' has the carbon wrap that gives that extra resiliency to fight bigger fish.

It was the precursor to the slow pitch rods I use for jigging, which are even thinner than the Trevala, and even stronger.

yep, those S trevala will handle a bigger fish than a Bassrod of course, those rods were made with jiggin in saltwater in mind with new tech, etc, etc, I have seen those trevala S rods and are nothing alike their siblings the trevala butterfly jigging rods, I just happen to have a Bassrod with a good shape blank with missing guides and short handle and considering some bass rods can handle a 10# LMB so, sure this one can handle a 6-8# Spanish mack or any other fish in that average weight as long you dont want to lift it and bounced to the boat.

altho, some spanish macks can get too big here for a Bassrod

the ones I have in the 1st pic, were caught casting 2oz lure with a regular trevala XXH and calcutta 400TE and felt like a good setup, with those fish I never felt I was overgunned