Tracy&James | Sunday, 12 December 2021
As a young boy I would often walk down the promenade to a place called Splash Point. I should note that this was a long time ago, before helicopter parenting became the norm, and it was not unusual for children to leave the house in the morning and so long as they were back before it was too dark, all was good. I found myself drawn to Splash Point as people would fish there from the secure platform of the walk way. As its name perhaps indicates, Splash Point is an area where at high tide there is deep water right up against the sea wall, often spewing spray and foam over the top if the water was rough. In latter years I came to realise that it wasn’t just the deep water that attracted anglers to this spot, it was also the onsite bar that allowed customers to walk out to the promenade with their drinks.
I used to spend hours, mostly at the weekends, watching the anglers fishing at Splash Point. Long enough to realise that those who could cast their baits the furthest were far more likely to be successful than those who struggled for distance. I should point out that even back then the fishing was really poor – rarely would I see more than a few fish caught within the course of a tide amongst the maybe 15 or 20 anglers who would routinely gather. An eel, a small whiting or a dab would noticeably cause a ripple of excitement amongst the anglers, so it was obvious that their expectations were low. Writing this now makes me think that actually these gatherings were more about drinking than fishing.
My parents would occasionally take me to the Splash Point bar in the evening and, if the tide was right, I’d take my soft drink out to watch the night fishers (a far more serious crowd) whilst they sat in the pub. I learnt then that night fishing was far, far more productive than any day time efforts but it was still the case that the longer casters (who could blast their baits far into the darkness) caught more fish than those whosesinkers you’d see crashing into the water’s surface within the range of the promenade lighting. I suspect on these trips to the bar my parents saw my fascination with fishing which eventually led them to buy me my first fishing outfit as a birthday present.
Rolling on a few years I acquired a beachcasting outfit, a 12ft glass fibre rod and a pretty ropey multiplier reel of no particular brand. I knew that in order to have any chance of catching fish I needed to learn to cast this outfit far in order to hit the sand gulleys that were scoured into the beach (visible at low tide) at the end of the wooden groynes at Splash Point (I was still too young to enjoy the drinking at this point, so was focussed on fishing). As such, I’d fit in as much casting practice as I could.
It should be noted that all this occurred before the internet and I had nobody in my family who fished who could guide me, so I was working things out for myself. My casting progressed quite quickly and soon I was able to make casts over 100 yards despite the horrible screaming sounds that came from my cheap multiplier. However at this point I started to experience line breakages during casting, these would see the 5 ounce lead flying an incredible distance unencumbered by the drag from the reel and the line. Luckily I never hurt anyone or damaged anything with this uncontrolled projectile, but it was getting expensive having to replace the sinkers out of my pocket money. Talking to the tackle shop owner I was made aware of ‘shock leaders’, I was also pointed in the direction of a book on beach casting by John Holden, and this proved to be a great source of information for progression into a ‘serious’ caster – one that would be accepted into the night crowd at Splash Point.
So what has all this got to do with fly casting? Well this week Tracy and I took a walk down to Splash Point and all the memories of learning to cast a lead far came flooding back. I remember a certain sense of pride when I realised I was generating enough casting force to break my straight through 20lb line prior to using a 60lb shock leader. I also then started to wonder about how much force I now generate when ‘going for it’ with a fly cast.
Tension glasses have been discussed on many occasions on the board. These are theoretical goggles that allow you to see the tensile forces in the fly line as someone is casting. They obviously don’t exist but they’d answer a lot of questions regarding the dynamics of fly casting if they did.
[As an aside, you can actually make tension glasses – you need a source of polarised light, a transparent material which you’re going to strain and a good pair of polarised glasses to view the results. I’ve tried this using a computer screen as the polarised light source (blacking out any other light sources). It’s then possible to see a colour change in a clear piece of plastic as it is stretched. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the light from a computer screen this isn’t the lovely rainbow fringing colours of a normal polariscope, but more of a shift to a dirty brown colour within the previously clear material.]
Anyway, back to fly casting. From my early beach casting practice I knew I exceeded 20lbs of force because the line would break. Therefore I thought that if I introduced a ‘weak link’ into my fly set up then I could get some information regarding the force I generated by seeing if the link snapped or not. The obvious equipment for this is a shooting head – as such I employed my ST27 outfit for this test. It’s vital that the weak link is not damaged by any other means other than the tension generated in the cast so I tied in a few inches of the thinnest tippet material I had immediately behind the fly line. I only used a few inches because I wanted to be certain that I didn’t haul the ‘weak link’ into the tip ring, thus potentially damaging it. The tippet material I selected was the 1.7kg nylon that I typically use for grayling fishing on the River Dee. I tied a perfection loop either end of a short piece and loop-to-looped it to my ST27 head and attached the normal 0.35mm running line to the other end. From my knot testing FP’s a while back I know that the perfection loop is a ~65% knot, so I assumed that the breaking strength of my weak link was 1.1kg or 10.8N after tying in.
My first few warm up casts all held firm with my modified outfit. It was quite a good day for ST27 casting (a steady following northerly wind), as such I built my distance up to an estimated 170ft or so (I forgot my tape). At this point I was thinking that perhaps the ‘couple of Newtons force’ I’ve read was probably not far off the mark and I was not going to break the line. However, next cast it happened – the weak link parted. I quickly replaced the few inches of 1.7kg nylon, which had broken at the perfection knot, with another that I had prepared in advance. Within two casts I’d broken the replacement also, this time captured on film.
Therefore, I think it’s fair to conclude that with a ST27 outfit I can exceed 10N force on a distance cast. The breakage occurs probably where you’d expect it when jumping through the film one frame at a time – the rod is past vertical and the haul is mid-way through. The observation that I didn’t break the link during the warm-up implies, to me, that I got lucky with my choice of nylon in that it takes a very powerful cast from me to break it. As such, I’m pretty content that 10N peakforce is a good estimation for where I’m at.
James