OK, this is "Prototype", specifically it's the
prototype for a rod that Rich Brown had asked me to build
for his two kids. Rich wanted a 7' 5wt. at an affordable price
and a durable blank; the plan is to use these to target Pink
Salmon. I looked and looked and looked; they just don't MAKE
a 7' 5wt.
However, after reading Clemen's Advanced Rod Building I know
how to MAKE a 7' 5wt. from a longer blank. The jist is as
follows - trim the tip of a blank and you raise the weight;
in other words you're removing some of the tip section, making
it stiffer and thicker, thus requiring more weight to load
it. Conversely, if you trim the butt section, you do not change
the rod's line rating but you DO affect the action; specifically
a greater portion of the blank bends resulting in a slowing
of the action.
Since I'm building two of these (one each for Chief and Duke),
the idea sounded interesting and I wanted to do one and see
how it worked before we did it. Well, it cast nice! What else
can I say?! What else really matters? It looks a bit funky
since the butt section is shorter than the rest, and perhaps
it's lost some of it's backbone (fighting power is most concentrated
in the butt of a blank) but I think this is going to be a
LOT of fun to fish.
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