karstopo wrote:
Someone, Ron, anyone, might talk or do a thread about the different rod tapers and the typical casting characteristics of each.
I love the 7/8 weight CGR and it’s interesting to hear the comments from the ones that don’t like the rod. Makes me want to experience a rod in that weight class that they do like, maybe it will be transformative.
The simplest descriptions always get people on their soapboxes over their favorite rods, and will get me misquoted out of context.
For the most part, I'm going to leave out the intrinsic properties of different MOCs and try to limit to the basic load curve down the rod length.
A rod with a stiff butt, slightly softer but still quick mid and softer-yet tip is a progressive taper. Any long rod that's not made to be strictly a distance-casting rod should be progressive. Progressive tapers have good control in close, seem to enhance your accuracy casting long to make you feel like a wizard, and are forgiving on timing and arm movements - the tip flexes enough and the mid loads fast enough that it still draws a decent controlled loop even if we're sloppy casters.
A good dry-fly rod is faster and a bit longer in the mid, with a shorter often softer-yet tip, and possibly stiffer-yet butt - I call these super-progressive. They often don't even load into the butt, which limits the distance they can cast, and the quick-on mid does all the work - makes it feel like you're not doing any of the work.
E-glass can make them with freakishly soft tips, e.g. old Heddon T tapers. What you gain with super-progressive is an amazing ability to cast close, a mid that gets line out in a hurry - both the long mid and short extra-soft tip together give you sharp strikes and protects tippet at the same time.
More line out loads farther down the rod in general. You can move all these points around over the rod length and have remarkably different tapers, and I'm trying to give generic examples. Again using my Water Witch as an example, the rod blank flexes like crazy all over, but it becomes a dry fly rod with a light line, a good progressive mid-weight, and a wet fly rod with a heavy line. It's strictly an e-glass creation - can't make this rod from any other MOC.
So starting back with our progressive taper, slow the mid down a bit, soften the butt a bit, and you have a deep-flexing wet fly rod. These can be very versatile in their ability to throw big hardware with a feeling of power, because the rod delivers power from from both mid and butt. If you speed up the tip at the same time, you have a semi-para taper, which rewards good timing and casting form with longer casts.
The CGR acts like a wet-fly rod with a stiffer butt - the stiffer butt is always good for fighting big fish - it gives you part of the rod you can use to horse and turn the fish. The mid is slower than most progressive tapers, and the butt is stiffer than most wet fly tapers, and that's what makes the rod so temperamental. Your timing can over-load the mid before you get any load into the butt. The trick to getting a long cast with this rod is not overloading the mid.
A para taper - the tip is faster, the mid begins to flex more, and the thin butt flexes deep into the handle. These work incredibly for casting distance in short rods - every inch of the rod is loading the cast. Good timing, short smooth arm movements and haul combine so every inch is storing energy and behaving like a bow shooting an arrow. (variations on paras give them more progressive tips for friendly close fishing)
In long fast rods, they give us TCR and RPLX, which depending on our casting skill, can make us look totally inept or totally casting-god-like.