Bruce Richards | Sunday, 8 March 2015
I've dealt with line weight issues for many years. Most of the confusion was about spey lines. That made sense as no two spey geeks agree on much of anything as far as I can tell. But now the problem has migrated to single hand lines and confusion reigns...
For many, many years all the line makers followed the AFTMA (now AFFTA) line weight standards and life was good. Then, sometime in the 90's, half size heavy lines were born. The impetus for that was the preference of a group of die hard Cortland line fans who preferred that brand over SA for reasons I couldn't understand. I could prove our lines were better in every way. Then I reviewed our competitive data a bit more closely and realized that the Cortland lines were almost all heavy and the light went on. Samples were made, everyone loved them, and the half size "GPX was born. It remains very popular to this day.
But recently there has been an explosion of lines that are 1 or 2 sizes heavy, some even more. Most are special purpose lines designed for nymph rigs or big streamers, but they are labeled with one weight, weigh something entirely different. It's working, I guess, but offends my sense of technical correctness. And what happens when rod makers start making rods specifically for these lines? A rod is made to cast a 6 wt. line that is actually an 8 wt. line. The rod designer is a good caster and doesn't like the rod "grossly overloaded" (in his mind), so stiffens it. A guy buys one of the rods, thinks it's too stiff so overlines even more. Pretty soon all rods are 9 wts. and all lines are as big around as you thumb.
An exaggeration, of course, but we ARE heading in that direction. Although I don't like multiple size rated rods or lines, putting multiple ratings on rods might be a solution. A 5-6-7 wt. rod would be used with a 5 wt. line for dry fly fishing, 6 wt. for nymphing, and a 7 wt. for big streamers. Then all the lines could be made to AFFTA standard weight and confusion would be reduced, I think....
Sorry no photos this time, the "images manager" apparently doesn't like me...