Quote:
Originally Posted by sewinbasher
I think it would be incremental and fairly small changes from here on in. The new range of Italian rods with welded guides that Phil Bailey of Flyfishwithme.net imports look interesting.
I fished with Phil recently and he was very excited about them.
See his recent post advertising them look here.
http://www.flyforums.co.uk/trade-cla...tribution.html |
You are right on this Paul.
It was very interesting spending time at Modern Flies this week.
Aldo Silva is right at the cutting edge for rod design as his clients are demanding longer and lighter rods (see the 10' 2 weight).
Modern Flies are now making rods for other manufacturers (Marryat is one such brand) who are unable to or don't want to make rods such as his.
He supports two research fellowships at the University of Italy and the University of Sweden and the focus is rod design and materials.
What he produces is a result of that research. His tapers are built to specifications from the very best French, Italian, Polish, Czech and Croatian champions who want light, fine soft tip rods similar to those used in Course angling. They are now fishing tippet size around 9x.
Imagine that over here. They do have some very special and secret leader formulas that enable them to get down to that thickness but the rod is the key to it all.
However, over a bottle of wine I did question him on where he thinks the limits are. His response was interesting.
The first thing we discussed was rod action. He believes that rod makers using traditional composites and resins are about at their limit and his capability of producing light rods and tapers is built around different graphite paper and new resins. It is unlikely that there will be a rapid conversion to these as most fly fishermen simply do not have the capability to benefit from any new rod and most rod makers focus on the mass market.
We then went on to discuss materials. He believes that it will be some time before carbon fibre is replaced. This material allows rod makers to design idiosyncrasies into rod formulas that make the rod unique. He himself has some 100's of formulas which he uses for bespoke rod building. The real change will come with materials and the degree with which rod makers will change their manufacturing process to get the best from them. He also doesn't see this moving too far as rod making tooling is expensive to replace. His equipment has evolved with his rods so it has kept pace with changes in materials. This is what is different and unique about his rod designs.
Lastly we talked about the manufacturing process. It is true that he uses welded guides on the Maxia range and will probably continue to do so on future rods. However again, the ability to do this has come from the materials he uses. So it is unlikely that there will be a wholesale swing to this style of guide.
The real change may very well come from price. Despite the uniqueness of the Modern Flies rods they are still not as expensive as say a Sage or Loomis. But they are significantly better. He has been able to compete because he has a niche that the larger rod makers are just not interested in attacking. Far too small. And anyway, he is satisfied with the size of his market which deals with very special rods to very good fly fishermen. Other rod manufactures will either merge (as we have seen with Loomis/Shakespeare/Shimano)or be forced to squeeze price to maintain market share.
There is likely to be shake out even here in the UK. I recently read an article by the new owner of Partridge and his view is that the small players will suffer as they are competing directly with the same products as the larger players.
Niche players like Modern Flies who have been around for decades have a dedicated band of followers who will pay for something different.
All very interesting though and it is part of the manufacturing evolution.
Has rod developments gone as far as they can go?
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