Jarmo Hurri wrote:

JR One of the best examples of how the industry is f***ing up the
JR sport in order to sell more stuff is the line manufacturers'
JR screwing with line weights (i.e., producing lines whose first 30
JR ft is not standard).

I'm curious: which manufacturers/lines no longer adhere to the
standards?

The one I know of is Scientific Anglers GPX (a 4wt line is in reality
something like 4.5wt).

Good question. The GPX is the line most folks know deviates from the
standard, because SA has been pretty up front about it (sorry, couldn't
resist g).

A lot of new lines are being put on the market with remarks from the
makers about the front part of the line being somehow different from the
"norm", but with no actual specs on the weight. Consider this from
Cortland:

http://www.cortlandline.com/technical/444_specs.html

Note that the specs for all the old 444 lines have info on the actual
AFTMA line weight (±140 grams for the first 30 ft of a 5wt, for
example). For the "NEW" lines, though, i.e., the 444 Tropic Plus Lazer
Redfish and the 444 Classic Sylk (sic, God help us), there is only info
on the tapers, nothing about weight. The same seems to be true for Sage
and SA; you won't find much about the actual weight of their lines.

My own view is that after having hoodwinked a large portion of those new
to the sport into believing that as you become a "better" caster, you
will (and should) inevitably want to cast farther and you will (and
should) therefore want to "progress" to faster, usually more expensive,
rods in order to do so. Problem is most fast rods are so stiff they
don't load properly with less than a whole lot of line out. So the
chumps, er, customers end up with rods they can't cast worth a damn at
the distances 90% of us fish 90% of the time. Hence the need for
six-weight lines labeled as fives, fours labeled as threes, etc.

I've heard (and read on the web) rumors that some of the new "delicate
presentation" lines are lighter than the AFTMA norm, but I can't now
remember which ones. That would be particularly odd if true since they
would cast particularly poorly at close range. In any event, once the
line weight standard goes out the window, a line is only a five-weight
because the manufacturer says it is, and matching a "5wt" line with a
"5wt" rod becomes a crap shoot, an exercise in trial and error, which is
of course not a bad thing for the line companies.

JR