Over lining and underlining a rod?

[Redfin]

So if you underline or overline a rod. 1 up or down in line for what the rod recommends.
What does it do to the action?

What benefits does it have? What reason would you do it? Is it hard on the rod?

I heard of this but was never told the reasoning or purpose.

 

[Skeet6]

Well, hard to say exactly, not knowing exactly what rod and line you have, but as a general observation, one line heavier will tend to "slow" the rod down, and make it flex deeper down the shaft, while one line lighter would tend to "speed up" the rod's reaction, making it flex less and react faster to user input, but not always in a beneficial way.

The reason it's only a "general" observation is that every rod is different. I do a lot of fishing with bamboo, and oftentimes they can be underlined and overlined depending on what you like (feel-wise).

Think about the fact, too, that due to manufacturing tolerances, any given rod might be a little toward "light" or "heavy" in it's given line size - which is why you really just need to try to know for sure.

If you "overline" a rod, and it turns into feeling like you are trying to cast a limp piece of spaghetti, you'll know what I mean. Same thing if you "underline" a rod and it feels stiff and doesn't load on the back cast, you'll also see the other end of the spectrum.

Good luck, and have fun experimenting!

Mike B

 

[PennKev]

Redfin wrote:
So if you underline or overline a rod. 1 up or down in line for what the rod recommends.
What does it do to the action?

What benefits does it have? What reason would you do it? Is it hard on the rod?

I heard of this but was never told the reasoning or purpose.

It will magically fix bad casting.

Or something.


Seriously though, overline when you feel like you are working too hard to generate line speed or get your line, leader, and fly, to turnover. Perhaps counter intuitively, overlining is most useful when fishing at fairly close distances. A lot of rods seemed to be designed to cast at longer ranges than most anglers fish. If you cast a rod at 50' you have a lot more line out, usually the entire head of a WF line, which puts more load on the rod than 20' of line. The reason overlining even makes a difference is because your rod is a spring similar to the limbs of a bow. You need to put more load on the sping to make the cast easier as the rod is releasing stored energy, energy you don't have to make up for with the power of your arms. Overlining? achieves this when casting at short distances by loading the rod more despite not having as much line out as you would need with a lighter line.

Perhaps just as important to loading the rod, you are also casting with more mass behind your leader and flies. Regardless of how your rod behaves, most fisherman will find it easier to turnover their leaders and flies when they are attached to a heavier line. Wind will be less of a problem and bushy flies will cast easier. This is why I advocate 4wts as brookie rods.

Underlining is less prevelant, but in theory a rod that does not seem to have enough stiffness can be cast better at distance with a lighter line as it will store and real ease energy more efficiently. The problem is that in practice you have less mass with a lighter line, which for most anglers will make distance casting harder regardless of whether the rod is working more efficiently or not. Wind, even just a breeze, will be the biggest factor working against a lighter line and will erase the benefits of underlining for most fisherman in most situations. Higher line weight rigs (6, 7, and up) won't suffer as much but those rods will probably already cast their designated line well at longer ranges anyway, so why bother underling?

In either case, action does not actually change. We don't say a rod changes action if casting at different distances. All we are doing by over or underlining is optimizing the load on the rod to the desired casting distance and our casting ability. We are tricking the rod into casting like it has 50' of line out, when we only have 30' outside the tip.

 

[krayfish2]

What rod or lines are you playing with. If you are looking at taking an Orvis superfine full flex and sticking a GPX WF4F on it, you may flex it all the way to the reelseat. The opposite would be taking an Orvis helios2 tip flex and putting a Rio LT DT4F on it. Can't imagine that would be fun to cast.

Suggest playing around with your combos. It may make a rod that you really don't care for....cast like a dream.

 

[3oh4]

I have a 5 weight Sage One, when I know I'm going to throw streamers I change over to 6 weight line. I feel like it helps me throw heavier streamers; I feel like my One loses power in the back-cast when I really need to crank it up and the 6 weight line keeps me from having to work so hard.

I think you lose a little sensitivity and accuracy when you go to a heavier line but you gain power. Just my opinion it could just be a placebo effect.

 

[SteveG]

I wouldn't say overlining a rod slows it down, it's just more mass for a given length of line. Think of how your rod flexes when you cast 10' compared to 40'. The rod doesn't flex deeper because the line is longer, but because the load is heavier.

It will not affect the integrity of the rod.

One common reason for overlining would be to more easily load a rod for short casts e.g. typical brookie fishing. When I fished graphite for brookies, I preferred a 5wt line on a 3wt med-fast rod. It was a roll casting machine lol. Also, the heavier line does a better job of turning over bushy dry flies.

 

[k-bob]

as other have noted, using a heavier line than the one that the rod is rated for can be good in small stream brookie fishing:

"Heavier line is often necessary
There are situations where using a line heavier than the rod calls for will also aid in casting and catching fish, such as when fishing small streams for trout. Where pools are short and casts are restricted in distance, a heavier line can be just the right answer. For example, on many brook trout streams, the pool may be only 10 or 15 feet long and you are forced to use a leader that is at least 7-1/2 feet long. That means that only a few feet of your fly line — the weight that loads or flexes the rod — is outside the rod tip. When fishing where distance is very short and only a few feet of fly line are outside the rod tip, it is important to switch to a line that is heavier. For example, if you were using a rod designed for a four-weight line and had to cast most of the time at targets less than 20 feet, placing a five- or even a six-weight line on the rod would let you load the rod, and casting would be much easier."

http://www.scientificanglers.com/choose-right-fly-line-weight/

 

[krayfish2]

Are gemmie anglers the only people that use these mysterious "bushy flies"?

#2(3xl) Salmon fly is a hard to turnover bushy fly. A #16 EHC or #14 Royal Wulff...not so much.

 

[tomitrout]

There's also that whole physics thing of F=m*a. Takes a certain force to bend and load a rod, so for the given force needed to get the load you'd like you can either overline a rod and keep your casting stroke the same for a shorter cast, or you can use the lighter line the rod is designed for and increase the acceleration of your cast. Problem that's trying to be solved by overlining really only ever seems to come up with folks using faster action light rods for shorter casts, you really gotta speed up the process to load those sticks and be precise about it.

So you can either hack it with a heavier line, or work on technique and broaden your skill set. To each his own though, more than one way to skin a cat.

 

[Redfin]

Thanks for the great advice guys. This really helped me.

I did really have anything specific. But I have a jp Ross beaver medow in 6ft 3wt and a st croix imperial 7.5ft 4wt. This year I'm fishing streamers allot. And fishing smaller streams trying to cast streamers on them is not working real well.

So I thought about using 5wt on each of them. The line I have in a 5wt is mastery gpx. To fish smaller streams (not brookie streams) with my streamers.

 

[Swattie87]

krayfish2 wrote:
Are gemmie anglers the only people that use these mysterious "bushy flies"?

#2(3xl) Salmon fly is a hard to turnover bushy fly. A #16 EHC or #14 Royal Wulff...not so much.

I use #24 Royal Midges mostly actually. Better for catching the ones that are good for Gemmie Fries. Only the big pole swingin' hot shots going for the 8"ers use those big, bushy #14's.

 

[Swattie87]

To the OP...It's a function of weight. The rod is designed to load properly with a certain amount of weight. Weight in FFing = Fly Line, and to a much lesser degree the fly itself, but for simplicity purposes here, forget about the fly. The rating assigned to the rod is determined by weight in terms of how many feet of a specific line weighs that much. Most rods are rated based on how much 30 feet, give or take, of a given line weight weighs. The thinking being 30 feet is a typical, average cast length. So for example…

A typical 5 weight is rated to load properly with 30' of 5 weight line. Using a 5 wt line, under 30' the rod will have too little weight in terms of the line to load it to its design spec…Over 30’ it will have too much weight, and be overloaded. 30’ isn’t a sharp cut off point, but the point is the further you get from 30’ on either end the more you notice the rod being underloaded, or overloaded. This is intuitive to how the rod feels and what you experience when casting. Assuming you’re using the spec’d line, for most rods it’s hard to get the rod to load with only 5 or 10 feet of line out, and at 60 feet the rod’s working hard and you’re having to hustle a bit to keep the line in the air.

You can somewhat compensate for this with your casting stroke, and some rods have a wider sweet spot than others, but the point in overlining or underlining is that depending on how you’re fishing you can make the rod more efficient by altering the line weight. For small stream Brookie fishing, rods are commonly overlined, because many casts are made with 10 feet or less of line out. 20 feet is a bomb, and 30 feet practically never happens. If that’s the kind of fishing you’re regularly doing, upping the line weight by one or two weights will make it so you have more weight to road the rod, with less line being out. The opposite is true if you’re bombing long 50 foot+ casts on the Delaware or Lehigh all day…you may actually want less weight per foot of line so that the rod hits that sweet spot of weight to load it with more line out.

Much shorter answer…it depends on a lot variables. Some small stream rods are designed to load with less line out, and the spec’d line rating works pretty good in that regard. Best to experiment with your rods and how you fish them and see what works best. If you can’t load the rod, up the weight. If the rod can’t keep the line in the air on longer casts, drop the weight.

FWIW – I overline all of my Brookie rods by one weight. I generally fish my larger Trout rods on larger streams at their spec’d weight. Once in a while I’ll put a 5 wt line on my bigger 6wt if I plan on bombing casts all day, but that’s pretty rare…Usually just works better to stealth into better position for a shorter cast anyway.

 

[JeffK]

What he said. Rod is designed for a certain weight, so going shorter may need a heavier line and longer a lighter one.

One more thing to think about - wind. I prefer a heavier line if I have to cut through wind all day.

 

[krayfish2]

But.....are the modern rods accurately labeled? Most 5wts seem to be 5.5 wts, 6 wts or even more. Very few (if any) lend themselves to being underlined for normal conditions. Agree, disagree?

This usually applies to most weights in a specific rod model line up. Once in a while, you'll find a model that is great in a 4wt and 6wt but the rest of the weights are not good (too soft, too stiff, too heavy, etc.)

 

[redietz]

krayfish2 wrote:
But.....are the modern rods accurately labeled? Most 5wts seem to be 5.5 wts, 6 wts or even more. Very few (if any) lend themselves to being underlined for normal conditions. Agree, disagree?

This usually applies to most weights in a specific rod model line up. Once in a while, you'll find a model that is great in a 4wt and 6wt but the rest of the weights are not good (too soft, too stiff, too heavy, etc.)

I would agree except that there's been line weight inflation to go along with inflation of the specified rod weight. A Rio Grand 5 weight line is actually a light 6 weight. Put that on a modern glass rod marked for 5 weight, and it's going to feel over-lined.

There also seems to be a bit of a move away from rods that made "faster" by simply rating them for a line weight higher than what most people feel comfortable casting. It seems manufacturers have started to realize that there is a market for rods that you can actually feel loading.

I regularly underline vintage cane rods, but that's a different story.



I'm in completely agreement about your last paragraph.

 

[PennKev]

krayfish2 wrote:
But.....are the modern rods accurately labeled? Most 5wts seem to be 5.5 wts, 6 wts or even more.

It depends. If your are pounding the banks from a drift boat on the Big Hole, yes. If you are fishing a 30ft wide PA pee trickle, no. If you regularly cast with the entire head of a WF beyond the tip, you are going to have a vastly different experience than if you only cast to targets 20ft away.

There was a period of 10-15 years or so that top high end manufacturers really lost sight of who their average customer was and where he actually fished. Perhaps we're still in that trend, but I think we are seeing a larger diversity of rod options from manufacturers. I'm not one to fret over a rod being too fast or too slow, and while I like a sweet casting rod, I don't make a big deal over "feel." A rod either performs we'll in the situation I intend to use it, or it doesn't. However, for those? who are really wrapped up in actions and feel, there are more options now than ever. Sage has a nice range of rods in a variety of actions. Both Scott and Orvis offer ultra light weight, fact actions rods as well as fiberglass models and Winston still makes Winstons.

 

[krayfish2]

I agree that the manufactures have softened the tips and mid sections in the last few years. Things seemed to peak around the Sage TCX era (aka error).

Where I was going with that quote was that there's still a pile of rods that your average Joe...fishing on an average stream....will find easier to cast when overlined. Models like the Scott G, Orvis Superfine or other full flex models seem to fish "to line weight". Yes, no?

 

[tomitrout]

Scott G series, awesome rods. Love my little 6'-10"/4wt, bought new back around '96. Never felt the need to over line it, fun for brookies up to mid sized Breeches type waters.

 

[Wildbrowntrout]

I put 3wt line on my 5wt cabelas rod and it casts just the same as the 5wt line. The rod is unusually flexible for my liking however, so that may have something to do with it, but I went 2 sizes down and have no issue. Makes a good brookie rod.

 

[troutbert]

Redfin wrote:
So if you underline or overline a rod. 1 up or down in line for what the rod recommends.
What does it do to the action?

What benefits does it have? What reason would you do it? Is it hard on the rod?

I heard of this but was never told the reasoning or purpose.

The reason to do it is if your fly rod is not casting well with the line weight recommended by the manufacturer.

If you fly rod DOES cast well with the rated line, then just use that. Don't overline or underline.

I've never overlined or underlined any fly rod. Many rods cast just fine with their rated lines.

I have cast a few, though, that were way too stiff to cast well at short or even medium distances with their rated lines. This is the most common issue that people are trying to solve.

A friend of mine bought a top of the line (expensive) 4 wt fly rod from one of the most famous companies. He thought it seemed very stiff and that it didn't cast well with a 4 wt line.

I tried it and thought the same thing. And I prefer fast action graphite rods. But this rod just had no flex, no feel, not just with short casts, but even with 30 feet of line out.

He asked for advice at the fly shop where he bought it, and they put on a 5 wt line and asked him to try it and see what he thought. They would have done a trade in or refund if he wasn't satisfied. But he tried the rod with a 5 wt line, and thought it cast well, so he kept it.

But I think this all shows the importance of casting rods before you buy them. Find a rod that casts the way you like at short and medium and long distances WITH THE RATED LINE. Buy one of those.

And these rods are not always the most expensive rods. Many are moderately priced.

If you are trying rods and it doesn't cast well with the rated line, and only casts acceptably if you overline it, then don't buy it.