About Daniel le Breton

My background is mechanical engineering. When I was about 30 years old (32 years ago), I had the chance to meet Harry Wilson, who founded Scott fly rods who became a good friend of mine and inoculated to me with a severe form of rod design virus. Trying to understand how fly rods are working brought me in touch with a number of people involved in fly casting analysis, mainly in USA. I am still investigating this subject and keep in touch with people that are active in the fly rod industry. You may have met me on the Sexyloop's web site, where I am known as Merlin.

Author Archive | Daniel le Breton

Strange effects of rod dynamics

By on December 7, 2015 in Casting Mechanics

A new contribution from my friend Daniel…… Fly casting can be analyzed by using various models and I use is the simple spring and marble one. When studying mechanics, it is usual to start from a simple set of equations and repeatedly refine them. Initially, the equations I used were rather crude and caused me […]

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Fly Rod Ratings

By on December 7, 2014 in Tackle

There is no way to find a perfect rod rating system for fly rods. Provocative statement isn’t it? But there are reasons why there cannot be an ideal situation. It does not mean that nothing is possible in this domain; it just means that this is not something that can be unique. There are rod […]

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Fly-rod frequency

By on November 24, 2014 in Casting Mechanics

A fly-rod has a natural frequency (see illustration) which is the number of vibration cycles per unit of time.  It is usually expressed in Hertz in the technical domain: 1 Hz (Hertz) = 1 cycle per second. Some people prefer to use “cycles per minute” (abbreviated to cpm), and 1 cpm = 60 Hz. When testing the […]

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Fly-rod casting model

By on November 17, 2014 in Casting Mechanics

Introduction Below you will find the outcomes of some 20 years of investigation (not full time I can assure you), sometimes with the help of a competition caster, and also from on line research of findings by academics. The spring & marble, fly rod casting model Here is a short presentation with a diagram to […]

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