Deerfield Fly Rods

[dasyl]

Deerfield’s original four-piece/two-tip Side-by-Side Power Pak rods date back to the early 1980s when they seemed to be the only company making multi-piece fly rods. In time, the concept became fashionable among traveling anglers. By the early 90s, four-piece had become the norm for quality fly rods.

Deerfield’s rodmaker Dave Sylvester remains intrigued by the industry’s progress. “Graphite has been evolving though mostly in terms of increasing fiber modulus. Our insert tips were basically an accident. On a whim, we cut a bent tip in half, rather than discard it, using the bottom piece for an insert between the top two sections. The result was astounding. The rod not only had the smoothest damping action ever but maintained constant line tension throughout the cast. Usually there’s a brief, weightless disconnect between the power stroke and second backloading but the rod remained loaded.”

The company set about designing a series of rods that has since narrowed down to some ten distinctive fast-action rods.”The insert advantage is easy enough to understand,” Sylvester says. “Lengthening a rod will automatically increase its flex, effectively loading deeper as the line weight requires. The inserts provide the best of both worlds–more length and modulus. Proving an old hunch I’ve always had: Advanced fly rod design is really within the rod itself. It’s time now to start taking the rod apart a little then put it back together a little more and see how it works. Very well, indeed.”

Each custom flyrod features a black uplocking reel seat and burl madrone insert. The full Wells flor grip is custom-turned and filled to superfine smoothness. The other hardware includes double strippers and black high-bridge single-foot titanium nitride guides, underwrapped for greater security. The tarpon rod has sturdy single-foot ceramics for the rough-and-tumble business of saltwater fishing. Wraps may also be trimmed to match many of today’s fluorescent fly lines. For the ID-minded, the company even has a signer who can copy an angler’s signature opposite the specs. Each rod comes with flannel bag and aluminum case.

Click here to read mcnerney's Deerfield Fly Rod Review!

Click here to find out more about Deerfield Fly Rods

 

[mcnerney]

Welcome aboard, great to have you as sponsors to the forum!

 

[Ard]

Hello David!

Over the next week I will have the chance to try your 10'6" #8 Switch rod. I've found a suitable line and have been able to cast off my lawn with it and am very anxious to get this on water. As Larry noted in his review and in conversations with me the fit and finish are wonderful and I'm looking forward to casting & catching with this uniquely designed rod.

Welcome aboard!

Ard

 

[dasyl]

The New American Fly Rod: More than a Spring Lever

A hearty welcome to all of us eager anglers. We are proud to be sponsoring such a worthwhile endeavor as the Fly Fishing Forum. And now, if I may, I would like to elucidate on a few matters that I didn’t even know existed three years ago which may prove useful to some.

The fly rod is no longer just a simple spring lever. Traditionally, fly rod design has focused on flex or modulus, usually emphasizing one or the other. The flex school confines action to tip, mid or full-bending rods while the modulus makers obsess over mechanical fiber strain that measures tensile strength or stiffness.

But at Deerfield, we’ve come to the conclusion that this single approach is short-sighted. You can’t have one without the other. If there is any one controlling factor, it’s modulus, but modulus that can provide certain critically placed power points. For all its plain appearance, a fly rod can be amazingly complex, as we discovered, rather accidentally.

That accident involved a tip that came out bent after being heat-cured. Rather than toss it, we used the lower half as an insert between a normal tip and the next section. The result was more than remarkable. It would foretell our future.

Using the same idea, we set about designing rods with inserts at other points on our basic five-piece model that can now convert to two-, four-, six- seven- and eight-mode models. And yet, impressive as the results were, the rods were lucky to be made at all, if only because the concept seemed so diametrically opposed to traditional fly rod tapers that proceed in evenly measured thousandths of an inch--generally .003 for trout and .005 for salmon.

Up to now, rodmakers have always believed in preserving this homogeneous design but our research soon proved that spring power dissipates considerably over the length of any arithmetic taper. The inserts, on the other hand, boosted the rod’s line speed while providing greater tracking finesse and loop control. I mean, totally authoritative. You know, the way it evolved was kind of Darwinian. If you look at the basic precept of Darwinism, that mutation is the essence of natural evolution, then these mutations were a mechanical turnabout as well.

The Darwin allusion isn’t so far-fetched either when one recalls that other crucial aspect of Darwinism--adaptability--where the Deerfield multi-mode rods can really serve well. How often have anglers been onstream where conditions change, from deep pools to riffles or long, mirror-smooth slicks that call for a radical change in line weight and fly size? Then imagine the inserts and spools to a four-mode rod handling 7-, 5-, 4- and 3-weight line, stowed in the back pocket of your vest.

Indeed, it is the inserts--at the tip plus one above and/or below the mid-section--that form the basis of Deerfield’s “PowerPoint” concept. In addition, most of the rods feature an equally short butt/grip/reel seat section while the first stripping guide is just 20 inches from the butt end--a whole ten inches closer than standard guide spacing.

Two incredibly new power points. Both provide compressed modulus at those stations. To prove it, cast your rod with the customary 30-inch gap, then run your line through a second stripper taped on ten inches below and you will see the difference in load and thrust. All in all, a glorious accident, and it didn’t take eons to get there.