In search of Vince Marinaro s Obsession [ long ] - Don & Sandy Andersen

Guys/Gals,

For some years I've pondered what the taper would measure for a rod that
Marinaro described in  the "Ring of the Rise" pages 52>60.

Marinaro says:
 page 52 - " For me, effective length is a very serious matter. In much of
my meadow stream fishing, it is often necessary to kneel or even lie prone
on one side to avoid spooking a nervous trout. A cast under those
circumstance, especially a long one, needs a effective length that will
hold the cast well above ground."
page 54 - " I used to dream of a dry-fly rod - nine feet long, weighing
under four ounces"
Page 54 - " I floundered about a great deal until I made the acquaintance
of the late Robert Crompton, a professional rod-builder from Saint Paul,
Minnesota."
Page 54 - "Crompton used to insist over and over again that no rod is fit
to be a casting tool if it is made with a straight taper."
Page 55 - "Convex tapers are not a new thing"
Page 55 - " For many years I experimented a great deal with convex tapers
and made some very good rods. But I was always obsessed with the idea of
getting more length. I still wanted that nine footer".
Page 59 - " The rod I wanted has the virtues of the dry-fly  tip-action rod
plus the durability of the parabolic and progressive tapers".
Page 59 - " The butt joint of my projected nine-footer was no problem. I
wanted it stiff enough to confine the action in the upper regions. I
employed, therefore, the full convex in sketch 2. The middle joint where
most of the bend would take place needed a modified or delayed convex as in
sketch 3. The desired effect here was to soften and spread the bend over a
greater area than the fragile tip-action dry-fly rod. The top joint needed
refinement for delicacy in short casts, plus some stiffening from the
convex design to prevent excessive fallover on the longer casts."
Page 59 - " The top half of the top joint is the most critical area in any
rod. It is the part the delivers the final impulse or thrust that
determines the character of the cast."
Page 60 - " Any one of the convex joints that I have designed and shown in
sketches 2,3 and 4 by itself, would not make a good rod. All of them
together or in combination make a superb rod. That is that way I got my
nine-foot dry-fly rod, weighing less than four ounces."
And from page 41 - "Accordingly, I have designed all my trout rods to carry
only one weight of line, a 5 weight."

OK, that's the way Marinaro described Heaven. The challenge was to
translate his words and sketches into a taper that reflected what he
described.
>From the sketches, tapers that I've made or cast, blind intuition or damn
silliness, I attempted to figure out just what the measurements of this rod.
The sketches showed a distinct drop in taper near both ferrules. Further,
the rate of change is 0.01435/5" of rod travel over the effective casting
length. This rate of change should be enough to support a rod of this length.
With these thoughts in mind, I plotted a taper as follows:
0 -   0.071
5 -   0.078
10 - 0.097
15 - .116
20 - .132
25 - .146
30 - .156
35 - .164
40 - .174
45 - .186
50 - .200
55 - .216
60 - .234
65 - .251
70 - .261
75 - .269
80 - .279
85 - .296
90 - 313
95 - .330
100 - .347
105 - 364
110 - .381

Now, the question I got for you folks - Is this a approximation of the
Marinaro rod? 

catch ya'


Don