Supposedly only the last 5 inches of the shaft matter. If you sawed the end off an OB,
stuck it on an 18 oz metal rod, you'd have a working LD cue. A very ugly one.
Wow, bet that puppy'd hit a ton, though.
This past couple weeks of being glued to the TV watching the Olympics (oops, I just admitted there's more to life than pool) got me pretty disillusioned. Pros playing hockey (and losing anyway), athletes switch citizenships, back door judging conspiracies, etc. What can you do? But using equipment improvements to beat your opponent....? Where will it all end?
Those super speedos sure do bend the rules if fair play IMO, but every technological advance, no matter how small, is taking one step further away from the soul of sport. I'm guilty myself.
I used to be a bamboo fly rod purist. Nothing casts as sweet as cane, or brings a monster trout to net better. So what's in my gear locker now? 27 graphite wonders and one collectors grade masterpiece cane rod worth so much I can never dare fish it. Years ago when bamboo was on its way out and graphite was taking over, I sold all my wonderful fishing tools and bought into the graphite craze. Why? The hearty promise of superior performance.
We're they wrong? Well, no. I mean yes. OK... Both.
Yes, the average guy can cast a line farther with a graphite rod than he can with a cane rod. So, he can theoretically reach those fish that the sucker still fishing wood can't get close to. He can also punch into a head wind a lot more effective because he can develop greater line speed. The rod reacts faster to an impulse from the fisherman's hand, so he can set the hook faster. It stays straight with virtually no care, hot or cold or rode hard and put away wet. It's lighter in the hand, so you can fish longer without fatigue setting in. I can teach a guy the simple casting style needed for a graphite rod in a morning, where he may struggle for years to get all he can out of bamboo. Besides all that, it's very exotic and expensive. Fly fishermen love exotic and expensive. So do dealers.
So, what's the beef?
Well, to start out, I ain't no ordinary caster, I'm up there in the top 5%. Near elite. I can cast cane a country mile. I can literally paint shape on the water with bamboo, whille I have a much harder time adjusting my floating line with graphite. I can use the most delicate flick of my wrist to gently but firmly set the hook, while with graphite I have to be extremely careful that I don't pull the fly away too soon, or break of the hair-like leader tippet with the quick acting graphite.
When I finally have the fish on, I can feel every pulse of a trout's fight through the delicate tip of a fine cane rod, every direction change, every head shake, and the slower springiness of the material allows me to put constant pressure on the fish, bringing him to net sooner for safe release.
The casting loops are a feast for the eyes, and anyone who has never cast cane will never learn how to cast this way. Huge, magnificent loops that float through the air in a way that belies their true power, for they do go far, and they do cut through the wind, and they do go straight when you want them to, or curve so sumptuously when that's what you desire.
Thousands of dollars and decades of use of graphite taught me there are only two ways that graphite trumps cane:
1) They are lighter in the hand and you can cast them for more hours.
2) No one cries when one gets broken.
Of course, they are sure marketable, what with all those charts citing fancy engineering terms like "scrim", "hoop strength", "modulus of elasticity", etc. Customers love to hear that shit. I remember at one shop I guided out of listening to the owner promise that if he bought this particular S___ rod he'd "be able to cast the whole 90' line and 10' of the backing" (a bald-face lie, he and I could, the customer didn't have a prayer). Then half an hour later during one of our casting clinics he proclaimed "you can catch any fish on the West Branch with a 20' cast". Which was basically true. "So why do you need to be able to cast the remaining 80'?", I thought. Of course, I said nothing. I got 10% on everything he sold my clients.
There is only one real reason why cane died off and modern composite rods took off. Tonkin cane became commercially unavailable because every blessed culm of it came from Communist China and there was a strict embargo against its import. Eventually it became available again, but by that time the hook was set, but this time it was firmly in the jaw of the consumer. With all the hype about the wonderful virtues of high-modulus computer designed carbon fiber rods, the public was, quite frankly, afraid to be seen in public with anything else.
So, read betweens the lines here and you will see where I'm coming from regarding pool cues. At least there still tons of guys using classic cues these days, and loving the hell out of them. With cane, it's me an' a couple old cranks out there, still nostalgic about the magic of a beam of sunlight pouring onto the golden hexagonal surface of a classic cane masterpiece, with a unique taper formula taken to the grave of the master craftsman who fashioned it, and a 20" trout putting a bend in it you'd swear would snap it in two in a heartbeat. Only it never does.
