numbskull

I tried an elbow brace and dud not find it helpful. What did help, in addition to grip and casting motion changes, was a stretching routine when waking up in the am and before a casting session.

Yes, I mean the cork diameter. Although the taper and convexity of the taper under those fingers are features I also find important for other reasons. I build my own fly rods and have cut off and replaced a bunch of grips trying to get it right. At one point I felt I cast better with the narrow grip but developed elbow issues that improved after I used tennis racket tape to enlarge that area under my hand. I think the orientation of the hand during the back cast is the major cause, however. In my case leading with the back of my hand with the rod angled low while carrying a long length of line was likely the major factor.

I found grip size and pressure to be a contributing issue. Too narrow below the last 3 fingers encouraged too tight a grip during off vertical casts.

Inspirational! A high bar, indeed. Well done and respect to you!

When?

Another season starts Buzzards Bay

I had a power matrix 8 wt and loved it. Fished it a lot with a 300 grain fast sinking line back in the day. It was a 2 piece rod if I remember correctly. Saw a lot of use, mostly from a boat. Ferrule eventually failed 2x, however. Orvis replaced it with a 9 wt TLS tip flex ( the Orvis shop guys felt that was better suited to the line I used ). Heavy dead rod. I hated it and feel it was the worst rod I ever owned. Cast OK provided you weren’t planning on making more than 4-5 casts per day. Thankfully its ferrule failed as well, how I don’t know because I hardly fished it. Incredibly Orvis replaced it with a 9 wt Hydros tip flex which I like a lot and still use. As an aside, I’ve never had a ferrule fail on any other rods. My experience with Orvis warranty issues has been an absolute testament to GREAT customer service, however. That said, the PowerMatrix rods are likely outside Orvis’ 25 year warranty by now.

Hi Mike The size 6 TKTTG guides work well on a 7wt rod as long as you are willing to pay attention when the usual leader and backing knots pass coming back in under load ( I lower the rod a bit momentarily) and you understand that once in a while with fast running fish a snarl may cost you a fish. They cast as well or better than single foot wires and I think as well as snakes. As for losing fish, I fish a lot and lose plenty. I don’t consider it a big deal. I want the lightest most enjoyable rod to cast and fish that I can get. Small torzite guides provide this for me. For others, particularly those that pay many thousands of dollars for a few chances at ‘special’ fish once or twice a year, they might feel differently. But we are not talking 100+ lb tarpon on a 6 or 7 wt rod. For albies and bonefish and hundreds of slower running species they allow you to build a rod with some performance advantages ( and some disadvantages) over the other options. You never know for sure what works best for yourself until you try it. I was a skeptic, too, but am now happy I did. That doesn’t mean small guides or torzites are “THE BEST WAY”, only that they can work well and are worth a try to see if one likes ‘em.

I am confused by some of the weights posted above. Here are the weights of RSFX single foot guides.....the lightest saltwater option available. Taken from a screen shot of the Mistpool site. You can see that a size 4 RSFX with I.D. of 6.6mm (the typical size I'd use on a 7wt saltwater rod) weighs 0.095g. Times 7 guides that is a weight of 0.655 g. A Fuji TKTTG size 6 guide with an I.D. of 4.81mm weighs 0.126g and the the 5.5 guide weighs 0.096g (same as the RFX above). so, using the 6's, 0.126 x 7= 0,882g. The difference compared to the RSFX wire guides is 0.227g. That is 3.4 grains. I can't find my notes on tip weights, but I have weighed them and the Arowana 6 tip weighs several grains less than the PacBay medium wire tip.....a pretty standard tip as far as I know. At the end of the day, a build using size 6 Fuji TKTTG's and a 6 Arowana tip weighs essentially the same as a build using the larger I.D. RSFX 4. Going down to size 1 RSFXs to compare the same I.D. as the Torzite 6 then the weight difference becomes 7grains minus the heavier wire tip.........7 grains is the same as carrying a single extra foot of a 7wt line.......3.5 grains the same as about 6 inches of line. Edit: Sorry the mistpool site chart did not embed but can be found on their site.

Mostly I have used the RSFX guides although the 4wt uses the RSF. I find there is a lot of friction with these guides when hauling or fighting fish. The guides wear quickly if you do any lawn casting practice, and fishing a fly rod I am reluctant to practice with is unappealing to me. The V shape of the guide ring allows the line to contact thread and epoxy when a locking Forhan wrap is used. Guide vibration is loud and annoying with some lines when under tension. The REC tips are ugly as sin and have an acute corner. Other wire tips are quite heavy in saltwater sizes and add mass to the rod in the worst possible place ( the Arowana tips tend to be lighter although smaller) .

I've used the 5.5 Fuji TKTTG's on a 6wt.....when I couldn't get the 6's in the T2 finish I wanted. The rod casts fine and the tip sections are about 0.3 grams lighter than with 6's but leader knot clearance is getting tighter than I'm happy with.....although I've not yet fished it in saltwater. That said, I'm underwhelmed with the single foot REC wire guides I've used on a 4wt rod and am considering tearing that down to rebuild with 4.5 torzites.......accepting that I'll likely need to use knotless leaders with a inline glued butt-flyline connection if I do. One other note. Fuji now makes a lighter version of the KW guide, called the LKW in sizes 16 down that work well for collectors. They're not yet easy to find in the US.

Yeah I agree with this. Single foot guides of any type grab knots and thin wire seems the grabbiest. That’s why they are a poor choice if fishing shooting heads and hauling with a short overhang. My comment regarded passing the clusterfck line knots that form as the running line snarls with fast running fish. Snakes do this better than singles and larger diameter guides better than small ones. It certainly is a concern with the small guides I use. It is mostly avoidable by holding your line hand close to the deck/water/ basket when clearing line, however. Another point worth mentioning, A size 7 torzite has about the same I.D. as an 8 SIC but a significantly lighter frame ( the 8 frame is thicker with a longer foot). Multiplied over 7 or 8 guides this adds up to a significant weight savings.

I’ve built and fished the same rod both ways. Here is the top two tip sections of the same rod built first with REC single foot titanium-nitrile RSFXB guides and a wire tip. The second picture is the rod rebuilt with Fuji TTKTG size 6s and an Arowana tip….after the RECs grooved from 1 year of practice casting and fishing. Note the weights. The wire build ended up very marginally heavier. Not what I expected, for sure. The real trade off is not weight, it is knot clearance. To get equivalent weight you need to use torzite guides that have less inside diameter than the wire guides. This has not been the big deal I feared, however. I’ve now caught nearly 100 albies and about the same number of bonefish on rods using size 6 torzites (for 6&7 weights) and size 7’s on 8 wts. I’ve broken one fish off because of a line knot that jammed and had to hand line two other fish in when the knot passed going out but not coming back. I was skeptical about torzite guides when I started. I now like them better than the other options. There are other downsides ( cost, bending, no good with shooting heads just like other single foot guides). I doubt there is a significant casting advantage but they don’t wear, don’t rust, handle dirty lines better, and are way smoother dealing with fast running fish and require less wraps/epoxy/ weight than snakes. If you build your own rods you’d do well to try a build and make up your own mind.

Phew! I was afraid you'd be upset and show your true colors, Slip. Glad we're all good on that.

Hi slip I used to share this misconception. Smarter people disabused me of it. A six weight rod is not designed to cast just 160 grains. It will, and is intended to, easily cast well over that. For example, a decent caster would have no trouble holding 50-60’ of a DT6 in the air with most 6 wt rods and that would weigh 260-320 grains. Likewise, if buying a shooting head for a 6wt rod it would typically weigh over 200 grains. It becomes even more confusing because the distribution of that weight matters. I can easily cast the 55’ head of the 6wt SA mastery standard line I own (which weighs 290 grains) on my 6 wt rod. I’d struggle, however, to cast the same weight in a 30’ head….but it would be me struggling, not the rod. This, as explained to me, has to do with inertia and slack/sag. For the same total weight a 30’ head ‘feels’ heavier than a 60’ head because when we cast the shorter head we accelerate more of it more suddenly. As for the true weight SA bonefish line, it has a 35’ head that weighs 190 grains and the NRX will certainly throw that just fine …… provided the caster can make a straight backcast. If not then slack becomes an issue and the line will feel light.