Balancing the weight distribution between a rod and reel wasn’t an issue for me until I took up bamboo. I learned to fly fish on salt water, and the graphite rods I used matched well with the reels I had, which were often of a light alloy. When I expanded my tackle to include fiberglass rods, many of those modern, lighter reels continued to serve well, and I didn’t think much then of the mismatch in age. Although I now like to use a period reel with glass rods, I strongly believe that matching a rod to a period reel takes a back seat to using the right line for the matter at hand, aesthetics be damned. Sometimes I’ll use a more modern reel with an old rod because that reel suits the particular line that’s on the spool.
With bamboo, however, balance became a more pressing issue. Bamboo rods are heavier than graphite and fiberglass, and the older reels were usually heavier, as well — the Dingleys, Meeks, Farlows, older Pfluegers, and Hardy Perfects that I began to collect. However, I never found anything that balanced the longer bamboo rods, such as my Granger 9050, and I even considered adding lead pellets or lead-core line to my Pfluegers, old tricks for making those reels heavier. I didn’t do so, though, because I thought it was, well, a bit heavy-handed. Was it so important to balance a rod, especially considering that the older Pflueger skeleton reels that match my older rods, such as a 9-foot Leonard Mills Standard, weigh a fraction of what the newer Hardy’s weigh? When did balance become so important?
The issue dates back at least to the days of renowned dry-fly pioneer Frederick M. Halford. Neil M. Travis expands on this on a post in his blog, flyanglersonline.com:
Like some anglers today, anglers in Halford’s day preferred the heavier brass reel to “balance their rod.” Halford found this “an argument most incomprehensible on the part of the angler, and the most ignorant on the part of the tacklemaker.” If a rod maker could not make a rod that was properly balanced without “loading it with a lump of metal at the butt end — it is time he was taught better.”
Halford had a point: rods in those days were often long and heavy. Why add extra weight? Halford, writing in The Dry-Fly Man’s Playbook, published in 1913, dismissed the “light rod craze” and often used “correctly balanced” 10-ounce to 12-ounce rods. What’s interesting is that Halford quotes and seems to second J. J. Hardy’s opinion that “it is not desirable that the centre of gravity should be at the centre of the handle. As a matter of fact it will be found that [when the rod is mounted with the reel and line ready for use] the centre of gravity or balancing point is about 6 1/2 in. in front of the forefinger when grasping the rod in a fishing position.”
That is about three inches off the balance point in my older, “light” bamboo rods. And that’s the balance Halford and his contemporaries had in mind, which is dissimilar to balancing a rod as we know it.
Vincent Marinaro dismisses as nonsense the notion of balance in his 1976 book, In the Ring of the Rise. In a chapter titled “Rod Function: Rod Design,” he observes that “there can be no such thing as balance in a fly rod. There can never be a fixed ‘fulcrum point.’ Every inch that the cast is lengthened or shortened changes the alleged balance and every unnecessary ounce in an unnecessarily heavy reel dampens and degrades the cast.” In short, rod-to-reel balance is in constant flux, since it’s altered by the length of fly line extended.
Marinaro suggests an experiment to prove his point. It consists of casting a rod with incrementally heavier reels in two-ounce increments (each reel should carry the same weight line). The point is twofold: to show that “with the lightest reels the casts are sharply and cleanly delivered flat out with enough velocity to turn over the leaders” and that “as the reels get heavier there is a noticeable lagging in the forward loop until finally with the heaviest reel there is decided dropping of the loop, and probably a failure to turn over the leader properly.”
I decided to try it out.
I used three reels of differing weights: from lightest to heaviest, a Hardy LRH Lightweight, a Hardy Uniqua, and, weighing in at more than nine ounces, a Milward’s Flymaster. All were loaded with 5-weight lines. I used a bamboo rod that would have suited Marinaro’s tastes: a 9-foot Granger Victory.
Casts with the Lightweight were decidedly crisp and with tight loops. The Uniqua also paired well, although I immediately noticed the difference in weight: I felt I was working more to make my cast. The Milward accenuated that feeling, and, as Marinaro observed, the loops opened at longer distances. He subsequently makes a valid point: “use the lightest possible reel of good quality and adequate capacity no matter how long or heavy the rod may be.”
There’s a problem with that, and, to my perception, it involves feel and aesthetics. I continued the experiment for several weeks, and although I liked casting with the lighter reels the most, I had trouble reconciling the looks of the smaller reels with the glass and bamboo rods I use. For example, I paired an 8-foot C. M. Kreider pentagonal rod with a Marryat MR7. I love how the rod casts that reel’s 5-weight line, but the reel looks out of proportion to the size of the rod. It looks weird. In contrast, I love how the Kreider looks with my Dingley reel. And yes, I like the feel of that rig when I hold it. Bamboo is about feel and looks. Fishing a beautiful rig is an integral part of the bamboo experience. And yet, isn’t being a more efficient caster more important than the aesthetic experience?
Hoagy Carmichael addresses balance in a chapter titled “Lighter Lines and Lighter Reels” in his book 8 by Carmichael. He comes to a conclusion similar to Marinaro’s, namely, that it doesn’t make sense to exert the extra energy required to move a heavy reel. “The force needed by the addition of no more than an ounce or two in the reel may not sound like very much but, when one considers that the difference between line weights is usually no more than approximately twenty grains or one-twentieth of an ounce, it is quite a bit by comparison.” And yet, Carmichael misses the logical conclusion. He claims that “reels can be too light for a given rod and can throw the balance (rod, reel and line in the guides) too far ahead of the hand grasp.” Interestingly, Carmichael was mentored by Marinaro and was familiar with In the Ring of the Rise.
An issue that seems to get lost in these discussions concerns line selection. I like pairing a rod with a period reel, but this preference is less important than having a reel that, regardless of weight and age, has a line that matches well with a given rod. As I said, I’ve sometimes used more modern reels with my older fiberglass rods. They look odd, but they have the right line for my purposes. Similarly, my 8-foot three-piece Leonard Standard Deluxe pairs well with a Hardy LRH Lightweight that happens to have the particular line that the rod prefers. Every rod has a unique personality, and a good part of understanding it is to pair it with the proper line(s).
Charles Ritz weighs in on balance in A Fly Fisher’s Life, published in the United States 11 years before Marinaro’s In the Ring of The Rise:
Let us first rid ourselves of a widespread idea, which I have often had the occasion to point out as false or, at least, much exaggerated: the reel does not balance the rod it is the line which plays the principal role owing to its weight and the shape of its taper. It is, indeed, on the line that the rod depends above all for giving its maximum, and yet retaining its balance. The ideal would be to be able to fish with the reel in your pocket.
I’ve somewhat dismissed aesthetics in the arguments above, but, for me, they do have importance. A friend of mine who is a cunning trout fisherman says that his ideal fly-fishing rig would be all matte black — rod, guides, and reel. I see his point, but I’d rather lose a few fish than look at a rod that resembles a stick of charcoal. I concur with Marinaro about the inefficiency of heavier reels, but I like how my Meek 56 looks and feels with my 9-foot F. E. Thomas Special. I also like how my shiny golden Marryat CMR 34 looks and feels with my honey-colored glass 7-foot Ijuin Yomogi. But proper line selection, in most cases, trumps a reel’s weight and appearance.
The balance of most importance is between the rod’s action and the line you want to fish.
