This may be a stupid question???

[Micadogs]

I have just finished my first rod build. (I will post some pictures tomorrow after my first fishing trip.) It is a United Composites UC70XH blank. This blank is rated on teh USA website as 12-25LB, extra fast taper. It is rated in Australia as 6kg.

I tested the rod yesterday by attaching a 5kg weight and then winding it in from my balcony. I was using a shimano stella 4000 as the real.

I'm pleased to say that my bindings held up no issues and so did the rod.

I noticed that dead lifting 5kg's seems a lot harder than fighting a 10kg fish. I would assume that any fish has some bouyancy due to the water and the fact they can swim.

Does lifting a dead weight equate to anything in the fish world?

I'm assuming that the drag on my line must have not equalled 5kg's, cause there was also the rod appyling presssure ?

I also noticed that the rod was bending all teh way to approx half way (not just the top quarter for an extra fast rod.


Can someone explain what is occurring? Is this a good test to perform?

[Owen]

Dead weight lifting has no bearing on fish size and load.
A 10kg fish does not weigh 10kg in water.
The load on the rod (by a fish) is also affected by tide, direction of travel of the fish, line drag in the water, etc etc.
Under that load you would expect the rod to be fully loaded. If it didn't progressively load right down the blank it would break.
Under lighter loads you may see most of the bend in the top section of a fast rod as you apparently expected.
In general you should set your drag to aprox. 1/3rd of your line rating using a spring scale.
However you should not put 50lb line on a 12lb rod and then wonder why it broke when you set your drag to 17lbs and loaded the shit out of it.

[Stuart]

First of all a fast tapered rod refers to the mandrel used to make the blank. It has no real bearing on the action. If you come to me and said Stu, I want a fast action spin rod then that’s what you get. A fast action rod that bends in the top one third only. If you wanted a fast tapered rod, well that could mean anything. You can have a fast tapered rod but with a slow action. Anyway, I could go on for about 50 pages on this topic. If you ordered a fast action rod which is rated to 6kg and you have dead lifted 5kg then you can thank your lucky stars you didn’t break the rod.

Over loading a rod such as you have done can cause inter layer delamination which may have accured? But by doing this you could have in turn weakened your rod by a small percentage. In time your 6kg rod will be more like a good 3 or 4kg rod. It reminds me of tackle shop guys demonstrating how powerful a rod is by attempting to touch the rod tip to the ground whilst pole-vaulting you across the tackle shop floor. This tells you nothing at all; in fact it won’t give you any indication of what the rods action is because the bone head has loaded the rod past its design parameters. That’s why you noticed the rod bending through to the butt, its not designed to load that much. It says 6kg which means you can use a good 3kg of drag while hooked up to a fish but never dead lift 5kg. In effect you have loaded this rod to 80 or 90% of its max rating. You’re lucky it didn’t break but who is to say you haven’t done internal damage.

Stu

[sleepygreg]

A bit like the twits who flex the top 3 or 4 inches of the tip of a rod between their thumb and forefinger to see how "sensitive" or "strong" it is. Those same twits swear by Ugly sticks because they are one of the very few rods on the market you can actually do this with without snapping the tip....absolutely no relevance to the performance of the rod in fishing conditions.

Greg

[Owen]

Micah,
Forgot to say congrats on your first build.
Don't let this put you off in the slightest. Todays gear is pretty good, but you have to remember that the cost of lower weight and higher strength by use of composite materials is that they can be fragile.
They have to be used within their design parameters or they go bang.
That's the beauty of building your own.
YOU choose the important things.
Want something to hand to your mates and bounce around in th bottom of the tinnie?
Build on an e-glass.
Want a personal ultra light?... Grab a high modulus composite.

After all, he who dies with the most toys wins!

[craftycarp]

There are no stupid questions only stupid people. By asking this question it shows that you are smarter than most and willing to learn, only next time ask the question before you do the experiment

You may have caused damage as Stuart said but it is your first rod build so I wouldn't be too worried. My first rod lost 2 of its guides on the first trip because I was hopeless at binding and epoxying, I am slightly better now.

Keep asking the questions its the only way to learn.