Ah. The new lighter, faster, more accurate Sage

someguy23 said:
This is an interesting idea -- Is (or was) graphite inherently fast and thus the best graphite rod makers were making making very fast rods in your view? I suppose it depends on what we mean by best, but the case of something like the Scott G or Winston TMF would indicate that at least by the mid 90s (correct me if I'm wrong), good moderate rods were being made.

I like the idea that Loomis and Sage were using the tech well and that produced fast rods, but I also think it at some point became a conscious design philosophy. Sage and Loomis became identified as specialists in ultrafast rods, that's what their customers liked and looked to them for.
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Graphite is inherently stiffer than other rod making materials, which is the "modulus" you hear touted in marketing and tech speak that translates into "fast" and "very fast" action fly rods. Graphite itself has a wide range of modulus ratings, and both Sage/G.Loomis ran a gamut of these over the years. In the race to "ultra fast", unfortunately, manufacturers ran afoul of limitations in durability. Most rods, despite being graphite/carbon fiber, still utilize fiberglass scrim to support the hoop structure under load, which adds weight. In the 90's some manufacturers experimented with graphite, omni-blown scrims that were considerably lighter but ultimately suffered breakage issues and high scrap rates during the baking process. Which got expensive with the bullshit lifetime warranties they were running at the time. I have a G. Loomis GLX fly rod from the late 90's that I'll never let go of because it was one of those that survived the high scrap rate and is a performance beast with that graphite scrim. Despite that, my favorite rods from the golden age of fly rods are still the G. Loomis IM6 rods--medium fast action workhorses that never failed, looked sexier than Jessica Alba in Sin City and performed well under a wide array of conditions. In many cases the ultra-high modulus shit impacted bass tournament fishing more than fly fishing, and I still see guys using high modulus graphite rods to troll 12 ounces of lead with foot long 360 flashers and spinners. Which is really fucking dumb, but hey--these are the same guys rolling solo in 20' $80k boats. More power to them. I'd probably do the same, and launch it with a F150 Raptor if I could.

Newer rods utilize better resins to lower weight and improve durability, but for the most part, the graphite itself hasn't changed much since the late 90's/early 2000's in terms of carbon fiber tube structures--it really is a battle of diminishing returns, and in many cases we're still chasing the best rods of that era. There's a reason euro-nymphing rods have all the durability of 1994 Fred Ettish. Personally, I don't usually use "ultra fast" rods as they tend to be pretty unforgiving in terms of what you can do well with them. I love them for salterwater, but that's about it. And most people who buy faster rods end up overloading them to slow them down (see the trend of 9.5 weight lines that are labelled as 8 weights).
 
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