Fly Rod

[TedderX 0]

Why did some fly rods come with two tips?

[Kentuckysteve 0]

Tip is usually the first thing you break.

 

They feel guilty for charging you so much for the rod so they throw in an extra tip.

[phg 0]

I've heard several stories. My dad, back in the 50's, maintained that one tip was for dry flies, the other for wet flies. Possible, if the tips are different. Others insist that it was to give one tip a chance to rest between outings. You'd fish one tip on day one, and switch to tip 2 on day two, etc. That way the tips would resist taking a set. Having a second tip, if you break the first, is always a good thing, but, really, bamboo rods are no worse to break than graphite.

 

I have several rods that I've made 2 tips for. Even though the tips were built as closely to identical as I could, I find that I usually favor the action of one over the other. Odd that....

[Dave G. 0]

I have an Echo 6 wt that was sold with two tips at the time. One is considered distance, the other presentation. They fit that description too and are numbered 1 and 2.

[Rocco 0]

The reasons given are all good but the two tips were most common in the days of bamboo and hard wood rods which were more fragile and prone to 'sets'. They all but disappeared with fiberglass and graphite.

 

Rocco

[utyer 0]

I too have an Echo rod that came with 2 tips. The rod is an 8 weight and one tip makes the rod a 9' 6" and the other makes the rod a 10 footer.

[Piker20 0]

I like the idea of a rod with two tips for different action. I had an old cane coarse rod with two butts and two tips to give combination of length and action.

[DrVette 0]

I was once gifted a SAGE rod that has 2 tips. One is a little more flexible and it is considered a fast tip.The other is noticeably stiffer and slower. The did this for the same reason my custom pool cues come with spare tips. It is far easier to match out spare (or different) tips while building it than to go through all the sizing hassles later, they can get a considerable mark-up for it as well. This way they still make money while they might loose some building it later.

Most of my cues were gifted to me as well...they wanted a true tester. Some were mad when i sent them back.

[redietz 0]

The reasons given are all good but the two tips were most common in the days of bamboo and hard wood rods which were more fragile and prone to 'sets'. They all but disappeared with fiberglass and graphite.

 

Rocco

Not quite true -- cane is less fragile than graphite, at least when it comes to breaking. OTOH, there were no life-time guarantees like today; the second tip was the equivalent. You could fish the spare while you sent the broken tip off for repair. And in high end rods, at least, the both tips were cut from the same culm of bamboo; you could expect them to cast the same.

 

Wet-tip/dry tip rods, while they did exist, were (and are) unusual.