PARABOLIC RODS?
Ritz Hotels - You know the name Putting on the Ritz and all that. Well
known old song too.
Charles Ritz was the son of the gentleman who owned the very famous chain
of hotels. Charles was a great tinkerer with rods. He had his own little basement
room in the Paris Ritz Hotel set aside just for that purpose... He had purchased
a well used 10ft 2 piece English made Ogden Smith split cane rod that he had
taken a fancy to in a shop window. Old and tatty, he lovingly restored it, replaced
the rings, and varnished the rod to perfection.
Now although Charles was the son of a rich man, he didn't have it easy, (a
relative term if there ever was one!) and his father made him start from the
bottom in the hotel business. Charles's father was old school, nothing was given
on a silver platter, so Charles the younger poor lad, didn't have a car, but
he did have a bike.
One day in 1956 Charles strapped his newly renovated Ogden Smith rod to the
cross bar of his bike and set off across Paris to go fishing. On the way the
string holding the rod broke and to Charles' dismay the newly renovated rod
got tangled up in the spokes and was broken!
The crest-fallen young Ritz took the broken rod back to his basement room
and took it out of the bag, examining the pieces he realized he roughly had,
minus the handle and the very top few inches of the tip section, a piece of
cane around 8'9 or so long. The butt section was shorter than the tip though.
So undaunted he fitted a new handle to the remains, re-spaced the guides, fitted
a new tip ring, and hey presto he had a new rod!
As it turned out the rod compared to the long slow English rods he had been
used to, this one was faster in recovery and would cast a line to beat the band!..
Charles fished with the rod and pretty soon realized in his opinion that it
was one of the best casting rods he had ever used.
Out fishing one day
and having some success with his new rod and playing a hooked Trout, he looked
at the bend of the rod and suddenly realized that the curve it took under load
was exactly the same as part of the curve of a parabola.
If any of you don't know and to explain it in very simple
terms what a Parabola so that you understand what was going on in Charles's
mind. If you were to fire a bullet high into the air the curve it would describe
as heads aloft and then gradually runs out of energy to keep going as gravity
starts to get to work dragging it back to earth is a parabola. Then as it starts
to fall back to the ground. It would follow exactly the same trajectory on the
way down as on the way up. If you split the point at the apex, the highest
point of bullets trajectory (this is called the Apogee. Yes a rod brand or blank
has been named that too.....) and look at the two half trajectory curves it
is a parabola X two.
Examining that curve it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that half of
that parabola is roughly have the shape of a fly fishing rod under load.....
Eureka said Charles that's what I'll call this new rod of mine!
.The Parabolic
Rod.
In one fell swoop an new fly rod was born. Not only that but a
new terminology that would be used for years after by rod makers and anglers alike.
He also coined the term"Staggered Ferrule" A fancy name to account for the butt
section being shorter than the tip. Our own Sharpes of Aberdeen saw the commercial
implication in the 60s. The Sharpes "Eighty" series of staggered ferrule impregnated
cane fly rods were instant best sellers for the company.
The story is pretty well laid out in Charles Ritz A Fly Fisher's Life.
You have to read between the lines though. It is my humble opinion reading between
those lines of that very enjoyable book, (his leader designs are as good today
as they were back then by the way) that while Charles may have been a very very
good caster, he was no rod designer the rod's action was arrived at purely
by accident.
Enthused by his new rod action "discovery" He was successful in persuading
the French fishing tackle company Pezon et Michel which was located in a not
far away Paris suburb (I think he actually persuaded them by offering them money)
to market the rod. True or false, the subsequent series of Parabolic rods were
world-wide best sellers. The Ritz Fario Club was one of the most famous cane
rods of all time. The Super Parabolic PPP was another.. ....
When the Americans saw the first Ritz Parabolic rod, one noted American
writer and commentator on all things fly fishing. Alfred W. Miller. aka Sparse
Grey Hackle. .... A superb commentator on things fly fishing and a lover of Leonard
and Garrison's fine cane rods wrote in review stating rather dryly, "You would
get exactly the same curve (parabolic action) if you cemented a plank of wood
into a wall then hung a bag of cement from the other end." Which disparaging
as it sounds, pretty accurately sums up and describes the curve or action an
original parabolic rod took under load. Sparse Grey Hackle's uncomplimentary
remark didn't stop the Americans though from jumping on the band wagon in marketing
their own range of Parabolic Fly Rods. Never ones to turn down a chance to make
a buck, many U.S. makers worked parabolic action fly rods into their ranges.
When something is hot it is hot! These were big sellers.